


That Reflection Man

by SkyisGray



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe, Angst, Drugs, F/M, M/M, Political Ambitions, Politics, Relapse, Sham Relationships, Starts as College AU, Then not college!, Unhealthy aspects of relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:02:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyisGray/pseuds/SkyisGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Political AU - Steve is the son of a Governor and the grandson of a Vice President.  At 18, he meets Bucky.  At 24, he marries someone else.  At 25, he's elected to the House of Representatives, and Bucky overdoses.  But their story is really just getting started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I promise, I'm working on my Stucky Big Bang fic! But this just sort of happened. I was watching Political Animals because of reasons, and then I thought I'd try my hand at a College AU because I went to college once, and then I guess my blood sugar dropped and I got angsty as hell. But it's a happy ending!
> 
> The title for this comes from a beautiful poem by D. A. Powell, one of my favorite LGBT poets. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/abandonment-under-walnut-tree
> 
> And lastly, I do not own any of these characters. I'm sure you're mistaken if they remind you of real or fictional people.

Steve Rogers comes to college with three goals in mind:

1\. Graduate with a dual Political Science/Public Policy degree with at least a 3.7 GPA in four years.

2\. Find an attractive, intelligent girl to marry in five years’ time. It is absolutely necessary that she have a scandal-free past; it is a bonus if Steve likes her.

3\. Stay clear of any excessive partying, radical politicizing, association with shady characters, or anything, ANYTHING that might quirk some eyebrows if found on some acquaintance’s facebook page a decade from now.

Because Steve Rogers is going to be a Senator; so says his father, the Governor of New York. And then Steve Rogers is going to be the head of an important committee. And then, if Steve’s made all the right moves and sacrifices and the grace of God shines down on the Rogers clan for the third generation, Steve Rogers is going to be President.

It might be too much weight for the average 18-year-old’s shoulders, but Steve’s been prepped for this since the age of three. All of Grant Rogers’ grandchildren had been brought before the arthritic Vice President and, after careful thought and consideration, he’d laid his shaky hand on Steven’s bowl cut and said “him.”

Two men from Joe Rogers’ staff help Steve move his belongings into his dorm while his mother taps away on her Blackberry. All the other mothers are wearing sweaty tank tops and shorts, and Steve’s even seen some visors going back and forth in the hallway, but Sarah Rogers is in Chanel.

“When does your roommate get her, sweetie?” she asks him as she finishes up a call with one of her event planners.

That’s the question of the day; Steve’s been assigned to room with someone named James Barnes, but all of Steve’s attempts to contact him using their new university email addresses have gotten lost in the internet netherspace. Or the guy is an asshole and ignoring Steve on purpose.

Steve’s parents are very concerned about whom he’s going to be living with, but it’s an Honors dorm, so they’re more worried that Steve won’t get along with the guy than the possibility of his being a bad influence.

“I don’t know, mom. It doesn’t matter, though, I’m gonna go say ‘hi’ to some of the guys in the hallway. Give me some people to hang out with until he gets here.” His mother beams at him, and Steve starts to make his way down the hallway, introducing himself with a handshake and a “Hey, I’m Steve Rogers, room 205.”

Steve thinks he’ll get along with most of the guys on his floor. There’s a healthy mix of guys who can’t wait to attend their first college class and guys who can’t wait to attend their first college party, and Steve thinks he’ll flow between both groups smoothly enough.

His mother and the guys leave after they get his room in order. It’s a lot different from the governor’s mansion where he’s spent nearly his entire life, but the ambiance of plastic shower caddies and egg crate will be good for him. Steve kisses his mother goodbye and promises to text daily and call every Saturday morning. She squeezes his shoulder and tells him to “make this experience count, Steven,” which is a reminder that Steve can’t take his eye off the prize. Three goals. He can do this.

He goes to the dining hall with some guys from his floor, and they’re already buzzing about parties and the girls on the third floor. Steve eats a sorry piece of chicken and some macaroni, and wonders how his older siblings managed to make the transition from their chef to this. He’s conscious of the fact that he’ll look like a rich douchebag if he says anything.

When they return to the dorm after a dessert of soupy soft-serve, Steve’s door is open and he hears someone moving around inside. He enters with a smile that freezes as soon as he gets his first look at James.

There’s no way he can fucking do this if he has to live with this guy for a year. This guy is gorgeous, with wild brown hair and bedroom eyes and shit, Steve already wants to cocoon the both of them under his new, extra-long twin comforter and just smell the guy.

The universe is being supremely unfair. First dining hall food, and now Steve has to sleep three feet away from the most attractive guy on the entire floor.

“Hey, James, I’m Steve,” he tells him, holding his hand out even as he thinks a litany of ‘please transfer…please transfer…please transfer’ in his head. James looks at his outstretched hand with his Movado watch and snorts.

“Bucky. How ya doin,’” he says as he tosses items out of a beat-up cardboard box onto his bed by the window, which Steve had been nice enough not to claim in favor of taking the bigger wardrobe. He doesn’t shake Steve’s hand, and Steve flushes with embarrassment.

“Bucky? That’s what you want to be called?”

“Yeah. This your TV?” Obviously it’s Steve’s TV; the university doesn’t provide HD plasma flat screens to go with its plastic, 1970s mattresses.

“Yeah. Did you eat yet? I just went with some of the guys in the hall.” Bucky points to the wastebin where Steve can see greasy McDonald’s wrappers and continues to throw everything onto his bed. Steve hopes that he’s planning on sorting it and not going to sleep on top of it like a dragon with its treasure.

“Are your parents here to help?” Steve asks when the silence between them drags on. He starts to relax; he won’t want to jump Bucky (and really, Steve has a cousin named _Skip_ , he shouldn’t judge) if he continues to exhibit all signs of being an asshole.

“Nah. Drove up here by myself.”

“Freshmen aren’t allowed to have cars on campus,” Steve points out.

“Then I’ll find some place off-campus to park it,” Bucky says back like he shouldn’t have to explain something so obvious.

This really isn’t going well, so Steve sits on his bed and plays on his phone. To his delight, Bucky does begin to shift items from the pile into his wardrobe.

“So what’s your major?” he feels confident enough to try again twenty minutes later.

“Engineering. Going to do my thesis in prosthetics,” Bucky tells him, and Steve is intrigued. Bucky just doesn’t look like the kind of guy who comes to college with his senior thesis planned out in advance, but he had to do something to make it into the Honors college, so Steve’s clearly judged him unfairly.

He feels ashamed for a minute, but just a minute, because then Bucky lights up a cigarette.

“Dude! Didn’t you watch the orientation video? The sprinklers are like, on a hair trigger. You can’t smoke in here!”

“Jeez, calm down,” Bucky tells him as he opens the window and sets his cigarette on the sill. Steve pointedly notices that he does not put it out.

“Look, I just don’t want to be those guys who set off the sprinklers on their first night. Everybody remembers those guys,” Steve tries to joke.

“Okay, fine.” Bucky nearly tosses a beat-up laptop onto his desk, and Steve can tell that he’s eyeing up Steve’s Macbook and rolling his eyes even with Bucky’s back turned to him.

“So I’m to go next door to Mark and Will’s room,” Steve says when he can’t figure out how to conversationally get past the cigarette thing. “You should come meet them, they’ve already heard about some parties going on tonight.”

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky tells him, and Steve rolls of his bed and heads for the door.

“I’m a Poly Sci/Pub Policy major,” he throws over his shoulder as he leaves. It’s only the most common collegiate ice breaker; the guy should know how this works.

He doesn’t end up going out to any parties because he knows that the freshmen are going to look like freshmen; he’ll wait for them to figure out how not to make asses of themselves, and then he’ll mooch off their knowledge.

When he goes back to his room, Bucky’s gone, and there are still plenty of clothes heaped on his bed. Steve passive-aggressively folds them before turning on ESPN and falling asleep.

Two months into the semester, Steve’s hard at work on all three of his goals. He’s got at least a B in every class, he’s got a few girls that he’s considering for girlfriend potential in the spring, and he’s managed not to get into trouble.

Bucky is generally bad-tempered, but it certainly helps Steve with the not-jumping-him thing. They have a tacit understanding that they usually leave each other alone and keep their shit out of the other person's spaces, but they’ve eaten a few meals together and one time Bucky quizzed Steve on European History, because he said he couldn’t sleep with Steve mumbling names and dates aloud.

Everything goes to hell when Steve comes back from a frat party one night and there is a sock on his door.

“What. The. Fuck,” he slurs to Mark.

“I think that means Barnes has a girl in there,” he supplies, equally intoxicated as Steve is.

“We never decided on this, this sock thing,” Steve complains.

“Dude, I think it’s a universal symbol.”

“Well where the fuck am I supposed to sleep? Is this for the whole night? BARNES, is this for the whole night?” he calls, banging on the door.

“Not cool, man,” Kai tells him as he walks past on his way to the shower. “You don’t interrupt a man when he’s got a sock on the door.”

Steve is extremely put-out, but Mark lets him crash on his couch. Steve only sleeps for about an hour before he wakes up and decides to check the door again.

He can hear voices when he stands directly in front of his door, and they sound conversational, not coital, so he unlocks the door and lets himself in.

Bucky’s sitting up in bed, bare-chested and smoking (damn it, Bucky) while another dark-haired guy sprawls next to him and curls his fingers in the long chain that Bucky always wears, even when he goes off to shower.

“Fuck,” Steve says, not sober enough for this.

“Steve, what the hell, man!?” Bucky yelps.

“Why. Are you smoking. Again?” Steve asks, unable to process the other man in Bucky’s bed. He goes for the easy grievance instead.

“Sorry dude,” the third guy says as he starts to get out of bed with his hands in front of him. “He said he was single.”

“This is my damn roommate,” Bucky snaps as Steve tells the guy, “I think you should leave.” He collects his clothing, and Steve gets an eyeful while he puts his pants on, then he gives Bucky a wistful look and leaves.

Bucky is silent throughout the whole thing, glaring daggers at Steve.

Neither of them speak for several minutes. Finally, Steve decides to be the bigger man.

“I don’t care whom you sleep with, but it affects me if I have an openly gay roommate.”

“You just contradicted yourself there, asshole.”

“If people know that I lived with a gay guy in college, then there’s going to be speculation about me,” Steve says calmly. He’s denied himself so many things that it would be too ironic if this becomes the reason why people suspect he’s gay.

“Oh, I forgot, Governor Rogers’ boy already has his eye on the White House,” Bucky sneers at him. They’d covered the basics of Steve’s intended career path at one point over a stilted dinner, and Bucky’s smart enough to infer beyond what Steve had carefully told him.

“And put your goddam cigarette out,” Steve tells him for what must be the hundredth time. Admittedly, the sprinklers had never gone off, but Steve doesn’t want his belongings to smell like an ashtray.

Bucky sticks the lit cigarette back into his mouth and puffs on it obscenely, his lips already swollen from, no, don’t think about that.

“Now, Bucky,” Steve tells him, out of patience and really just wanting to go to bed and jerk off very quietly. Bucky continues to fellate the cigarette, and Steve’s had enough. He reaches into Bucky’s space and grabs the cigarette from his mouth, flinging it into the little sink in the corner of the room.

Bucky smacks his chest, still sitting on his bed with his blankets over his legs, and Steve smacks him back. It’s a bad idea because of all the still-sweaty skin.

Steve’s palms are magnetized to Bucky’s collarbone, and the look on Bucky’s face changes.

“Uh, Steve?” Steve leans closer, his brain short-circuiting now that he’s finally gotten this close to a half-naked man after years of directly avoiding this situation.

“You can-”

He’s probably saying something like ‘you can get off me,’ or ‘you can go fuck yourself because you just kicked my hook-up out,’ but it sounds like permission for a split second, and Steve is leaning into Bucky and kissing him.

It’s not that Steve’s lost the ability to think rationally. There are actually a lot of rational thoughts spinning through his head long enough for him to read them, like the taste of cigarettes mixed with the taste of someone else’s cum, and the fact that the aforementioned combination is utterly disgusting, but Steve can’t give much weight to any of these thoughts when Bucky is warm underneath his hands and mouth.

He climbs fully onto the bed and runs his hands over Bucky’s torso. Bucky kisses him back, wide-eyed, and Steve takes a moment of pride that he’s shocked his roommate. Now Bucky can’t call him a square anymore.

He reaches down between Bucky’s legs and finds that he’s naked under the covers. Why isn’t Steve naked? It seems like an oversight on his part. He starts to yank off his shirt and pants, and Bucky enthusiastically helps.

Crawling under the covers along with Bucky, Steve pushes him down to the bed and lines up their cocks. He puts his hands on either side of Bucky’s shoulders and drags his hips up and down the length of Bucky’s cock, rubbing his own hard-on against the juncture of Bucky’s leg. He comes in minutes and somehow Bucky follows right after, even though he’s already had at least one orgasm tonight.

“Shit,” Bucky says as Steve rolls partially off him and lies with his face tucked into the sweaty crook of Bucky’s neck. “This is the best night ever.”

Steve starts to date Peggy in the spring. She’s a leggy brunette who wears lipstick a little too red for Steve’s mother’s taste, but she walks the line between sassy and respectable so well that Steve thinks he’s hit gold.

He has lunch with Peggy in between his classes, goes with her to her sorority functions, and occasionally fucks her when her roommate is at her own boyfriends’. He never stays the night, telling her that it wouldn’t look right for him to wander back to his dorm at eight in the morning.

When he gets home after fucking Peggy, Bucky will look at him from where he’s commandeered Steve’s bed because he says he can’t study and have sex in the same space. He’ll turn up his nose at Steve and tell him to go “shower the cunt off of him,” and Steve doesn’t know whether he means Peggy or her literal vagina. He does it anyway.

Then they’ll move to Bucky’s bed and Bucky will suck him down and then slip the lube out from under his pillow, slicking Steve up and sliding in. And whatever mushiness Steve’s feeling for Peggy will go right out the window with his muffled moans.

Steve loves it. He feels bad that he’s being unfaithful to Peggy, but from a certain point of view, Bucky’s the one he’s in a relationship with and Peggy is his thing on the side. It’s just that no one else can ever see it from that perspective.

Bucky, for his part, doesn’t limit himself to Steve either. Steve actually doesn’t know what Bucky does when he disappears for two hours every now and then, because Bucky had once told him, “Goal number three; I’m giving you plausible deniability.”

Bucky knows his goals; Bucky knows everything. Steve’s never had a real best friend before, but he and Bucky do almost everything together, and Steve wants to tell him about every thought and idea he’s ever had.

One of those thoughts is that he loves Bucky. He tells him this during their second finals week, and Bucky stares at him.

“I’m not some trophy wife candidate, Steve.”

“So you don’t love me back?” It’s half-teasing and half-serious.

“Of course I do, punk,” Bucky whispers against his lips. “But what happens when you need to get married?”

“Are you saying we’ll still be together in four years?” Steve asks him with a grin.

“Nah, you’re probably right. We’ll get sick of each other before then.”

That summer, Steve texts Peggy every few days. He and Bucky skype every night.

They live on campus again for their sophomore year and get an apartment off-campus after that. Bucky’s bedroom is where they study; they share Steve’s king-sized bed, and Steve introduces Bucky to Egyptian cotton sheets.

Bucky has lived a very different life than Steve. He’d grown up without a mother in the picture and a drug dealer for a father. Some teacher had championed Bucky from an early age, and he’d been tracked into Academics by a devoted teaching staff who refused to let him fall through the cracks. Bucky is brilliant where Steve is just smart, and he flies through his engineering coursework and still gets As.

Steve’s parents would probably faint if they knew that Bucky grew up in a house that occasionally didn’t have running water, but Steve always bribes Bucky with blowjobs to be polite around his parents, and they are charmed by the handsome engineering major soon enough. Steve’s father still tells him that it looks odd for him to live with the same boy all throughout college, but Steve whines a little about finding true friends in the cutthroat political world, and his dad backs off.

Peggy and Steve break up during the winter of his sophomore year, and he starts dating her younger sister, Sharon, the next fall. Peggy’s a little bitter about it, but Sharon is awesome. She’s a sun-kissed blonde beauty with a wicked sense of humor, and, even better, she seems to know how the game works.

“Let’s get married and then you can bang your secretary as much as you want, as long as I get a string of pearls each time,” she jokes drunkenly to him at a party before they’re officially dating. Steve takes her at her word, though he swaps out ‘secretary’ with ‘college best friend,’ and ‘pearls,’ with ‘something less expensive than pearls, because he’s going to bang Bucky a lot.’

During Steve and Bucky’s senior year (Sharon’s junior), she finally clues into the fact that her boyfriend and his best friend are sleeping together.

“Oh,” she said, wide-eyed, after walking in on them both in the shower. It makes it very difficult to pretend that nothing’s amiss.

They sit her down and explain the situation to her, and amazingly, she honors the drunken deal.

“So you want me to, like, be your beard?” she asks Steve after she’s smacked them both and wished herpes upon them.

“No,” Steve says amicably, trying to play the nice guy.

“Yes, that is absolutely what we want,” Bucky tells her.

She eyes them up speculatively and, of all things, asks Steve if he loves Bucky. He’s known the answer for almost three years, but he’s never told anyone other than Bucky.

“Yeah. More than anything. But you know what that knowledge would do to my career.” And Steve’s career is just firing up; he’s got an internship lined up with one of his father’s friends in the House of Representatives as soon as he graduates, and he’s going to work on his cousin’s campaign in New Jersey after that.

“Well, give me a clothing budget for all of these fancy parties you’ve been telling me about, and you’ve got yourself a beard.”

Steve and Sharon stop sleeping together after that, and he’s fine with her hooking up with guys so long as no one finds out. He’s finally monogamous with Bucky, though Bucky still goes on his errands every week or so.

The day before graduation, Steve learns what’s been going on under his nose for the past four years.

There’s a little baggy of white powder stuffed into the corner of Bucky’s wallet, and Steve feels like his world is crashing down around his ears.

“I’ve shared a bedroom with you for four years. What. The hell. Are you doing?” he asks Bucky, reverting to punctuating his sentences for emphasis when he’s mad.

“You know what that is,” Bucky tells him in a low voice.

“How long, Bucky?” Bucky shrugs.

“Since high school. Drug dealer dad, remember? And don’t give me shit about how this will fuck up your career; you ALWAYS make it about you, and no one knows about me anyway.”

These are good points. People have started to point speculative spotlights at Steve, hinting that he’ll run for office a few elections out, and Steve has deliberately kept Bucky out of these spotlights. No one knows that Bucky is gay, and certainly no one knows that Bucky is Steve’s lover. But this is one more thing to cover up, and it’s getting stressful.

Steve stammers something about rehab and Bucky rolls his eyes at him.

“One, I don’t need rehab. I’m a very low-grade addict,” he tells him. “And two, going to rehab is a very public thing. Someone would find out and link my name with yours.”

Steve cries in the bathroom later, knowing that Bucky’s right. He wants his boyfriend to get help, but anything he does will blow back on Steve. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to make this choice between what’s best for Bucky and what his family wants more than anything, but Bucky makes it for him.

“Steve, come on. I didn’t want you to know about this. Can you just pretend you don’t know?”

Steve tries, but it’s suddenly so damn noticeable. Bucky has always been a temperamental guy, flitting between moods abruptly, and now the curtain is pulled back and Steve knows exactly when he’s had a hit. Or a puff. Or whatever the vocabulary is for …Cocaine. There; he’s thought the word.

It’s harder to find an excuse to live together after they graduate, and they spend several months apart. Steve’s parents let him use the family condo in DC, and Bucky goes to California to work for a robotics firm. They miss each other too much, and Bucky is the one to make the sacrifice and transfer to a much less prestigious company in Maryland. After that, Steve feels like he doesn’t have the right to demand Bucky give up anything, even if it’s the drugs.

Bucky unofficially moves into his guest room while he ‘looks for a place,’ and a year later, Steve’s father asks, “Why the hell is he still living with you?”

In a fit of bravery, Steve tells him, “You know why, Dad.” All hell breaks loose in the family, and Steve sits down with all the key players and their trusted aides.

“I’m going to marry Sharon,” he tells them, and it’s the only thing that could possibly fix this.

Sharon moves in and it’s a very strange version of Three’s Company. She gets what is supposed to be Bucky’s room, and Bucky continues to stay with Steve. One day, Steve’s looking through his finances and finds that one of his father’s employees has labeled Bucky as a live-in housekeeper for tax purposes.

Bucky doesn’t like that at all.

“Your family is fucking paying me, Steve,” he snarls. “They are paying me to keep my mouth shut and stay hidden, and I guess to clean up after you and your fiancée too.”

“You have to admit, it makes a lot of sense. There’s not a lot of reasons why you’d be living with newlyweds,” Steve tells him. “And we can all split the cleaning duties.”

Bucky is Steve’s best man at the wedding. It’s a beautiful wedding, Steve’s mother’s crowning achievement, and the moment that will forever be imprinted on Steve’s memory is when he turns to Bucky for the rings. Locking eyes with Bucky and touching his hand in front of a crowd of people hits too close to home, and when Steve feels Bucky’s hands shaking, he has a moment of clarity where he knows that he’s fucking up in ways he never imagined when his three goals seemed the end-all/be-all path to a happy future.

At the reception, Bucky locks himself in the bathroom and says he needs a minute alone. Steve has to go greet his guests and do groom-like things, so he whispers through the door that he loves Bucky and leaves him there.

When Steve sees him later, Bucky is high out of his mind and making an ass of himself. The family, embarrassed, sends some people to corral him and Steve doesn’t find out until the next day.

Living with Sharon and Bucky after the wedding is difficult. Sharon knows how this works and how she’ll benefit if she doesn’t stir the pot, but it starts to be too much for her, and she stakes her claim on Steve to do husbandly things with her. He’s caught in an awkward tug-of-war, and he doesn’t understand why Sharon is trying to be his wife in private as well as in public.

She convinces him to sleep with her one day because they technically do have to consummate the marriage to make it legal, and after that, she’s talking about how she wants to have a baby and she’ll leave Steve and Bucky alone once she has a baby. Steve’s smart enough not to get aboard that idea, but Bucky hears them talking about it one night, and he moves out a week later.

Steve visits him in his crappy apartment in Baltimore at least once a week until Bucky formally breaks up with him.

“I’m sick of you now. Go live your shiny, ambitious life,” he tells Steve. He has a few stray grains of powder under his nose when he says it, and Steve asks him how much he’s using. The amount doesn’t actually mean anything to Steve, but he calls a narcotics hotline when he’s driving home to give Bucky space, and the woman on the other end of the line tells him that his ‘friend’ has a serious problem.

As soon as he turns twenty-five, Steve declares his candidacy to run for the House of Representatives. It’s not a harsh race, but the media make a big deal about the “Next Rogers Up,” and Steve and Sharon find themselves in plenty of tabloids. Someone runs the customary drivel about Steve being homosexual, and Bucky calls him up in a panic to promise that he didn’t say anything to anybody.

“Bucky, it’s okay. That tabloid does this to everyone; it’s practically a rite of passage.” He takes a breath, feeling muzzy-headed at the sound of Bucky’s voice for the first time in four months. “How are you?”

“Peachy,” Bucky says. Steve starts to ask him some questions about work, but Bucky shuts him down.

“I don’t work there anymore,” he says.

“Bucky…” Steve whispers, getting a premonition.

“It’s not because of the blow. I wasn’t challenged by the work,” Bucky tells him. Steve knows it’s a lie.

“Bucky, if you need money to go to rehab,” he offers. He hears a snort.

“Nah, I’m fine. Did you…did you and Sharon have that kid yet?” he asks, and Steve wants desperately to be someone other than who he’s been raised to be. Someone who would be with Bucky right now, unafraid of the world’s censure. Someone who had the right to kick Bucky’s ass and get him clean.

“Bucky, you know that you can call me whenever?” he tells him. “I will always make time for you.” He hears Bucky sniffle. “I love you so much.”

“Mr. Rogers!” someone calls to him, and he remembers that he’s supposed to be giving a speech about now.

“I love you too, Steve,” Bucky tells him, and they’re the best words he’s heard in weeks.

Bucky calls him on the eve of his election. He’s supposed to sit in his office with his campaign staff and wait for the call to be made (and it’s almost definitely going to be in Steve’s favor – all of the pollsters have predicted it). Then they’ll drink champagne, and Steve will look forward to the time he gets to do this for a position with a little more weight to it.

He goes into the bathroom to pick up Bucky’s call, the noise of the television in the office covering up their conversation.

“Bucky; what’s up?”

“I’m sorry, Steve.”

“Sorry for what?” Bucky just breathes at him.

“Bucky? Baby, you’re scaring me,” he says. In all honesty, he’s been waiting for this call ever since he learned that Bucky lost his job.

“Bucky, listen to me. Are you at home right now?” Bucky hums in acknowledgement, and Steve wonders if he’s lying on his bedroom floor or the bathroom mat.

“I’m calling an ambulance for you. Don’t die. Please don’t die. I love you.”

“Will you be sad if I die?” Bucky asks. Someone bangs on the door and says, “Come on out, Representative Rogers!”

“Do. Not. Die,” Steve repeats as his eyes heat up. He hangs up on Bucky and dials 911.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“I need to be in touch with Baltimore PD or their ambulance service or something, please help me. My friend in Baltimore just overdosed,” Steve says as he exits the bathroom. The staffer’s eyes swell to dinner-plate size when he hears Steve, and the celebratory mood quickly dies when people figure out that Steve is leaving and for what purpose.

His mother is already calling him before he’s out of DC, and he lets the call go to Voicemail. He understands that he’s royally screwing everything. He’s not even there to make his speech to the meager press who cover House elections. But he doesn’t want Bucky to go through this alone.

He pulls up to the nearest hospital to Bucky’s apartment and double-parks his car. He takes the stairs two at a time, and when he bursts into the ER and demands to see James Barnes, the nurse gives him a look and tells him that she just saw him on TV.

They only let him in to see Bucky for five minutes because he isn’t any sort of blood relation. It jogs Steve’s memory and makes him realize that he should probably get in touch with Bucky’s dad, but he doesn’t have the number. The nurse lets him have Bucky’s cell phone when he voices this, and when he flips it open, he sees a picture of the two of them saved as Bucky’s background.

Years later, when Steve’s become the first openly gay man elected to the office of Governor, he’ll talk about this moment as the defining moment of his career and of his life. As it stands now, he knows what he has to do, but he doesn’t know how to start.

“Bucky,” he whispers to Bucky’s unconscious form under the woolen hospital blanket. He touches Bucky’s purpled eyelids and smells vomit on breath. “Bucky, you pull through this, because I’m not sure what I’m doing. I need your help to figure this out. But I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

He twines their fingers together, careful of the IV in Bucky’s hand, and tries to smile. He wants Bucky to wake up to him smiling.

“I’ve only got one goal now, Bucky.”


	2. Chapter 2

From the ages of three through eighteen, Steve Rogers walks a carefully-manicured path of wholesome activities, public fundraising events, and extensive tutelage under his political behemoth grandfather. Even before he fully grasps the weight that the people surrounding him have placed on his tiny shoulders, he’s conscious of the fact that they want something from him, and that he’ll break their hearts if he screws up.

All things considered, though, it’s not that hard to stay on the Rogers path; there’s a family member or an aide with him near constantly to provide guidance, and if he shows any sign of deviating course, they’ll gently shove him back to where he needs to be, nipping the potential threat in the bud. It doesn’t matter if the threat is an invitation to the wrong child’s birthday party or a poor haircut decision or an Eminem record.

At the age of eighteen, Steve goes to college and promptly falls off the path. Only no one realizes this at first, and even Steve doesn’t think he’s stumbled too far off course. The cause is a pretty face, and while Steve won’t be the first politician to jeopardize his career for a pretty face, or even for a pretty, male face, it catches him off guard on the first night away from home.

It probably could have ended there had the face not belonged to one Bucky Barnes. By eighteen, Steve has come to grips with his seemingly unfortunate sexuality and learned to distance himself from temptation when it arose. Meeting someone as hot as Bucky, even living with someone as hot as Bucky, would not have been enough to break Steve.

What breaks him is the way Bucky tunes out the world when he works on his homework. The way he criticizes Steve freely. The way he rolls his eyes when Steve’s being a little too pompous. The way he only gets five dining hall meals a week, but he makes them count.

Steve and Bucky are graduated and living together in the family condo in DC for over a year before someone finally realizes that Steve is _not on the fucking path._

He can’t really say that he’s forced to marry Sharon, because it’s his idea, and he accepts the fact that his life will be a lie probably for its duration because who he is doesn’t match up with who he’s supposed to be.

Or at least he thinks he does until he’s reveling in his first political victory and Bucky is overdosing in Baltimore, and it’s not even a choice.

The desire to help people and desperation for love that fuel his political ambitions shift sideways, and he realizes that he doesn’t give a shit if he can’t help Bucky and if Bucky can’t love him.

The night that Steve is elected to represent his district in the House, he finds himself not sipping brandy with his father and basking in the glow of his approval while dreaming big about the impact he can make now. He’s always kind of pictured that it would go that way.

Instead, he finds himself holding a cold pack to Bucky’s forehead as Bucky drifts in and out of Diazepam-induced sleep.

The cold seeps from the little bundle in his hand up his arm and into his chest. Every few minutes, Steve thinks he’s having a panic attack or an asthma attack (which, officially, he grew out of as a teenager) and he has to match his breathing up with Bucky’s slow inhales and exhales to calm down.

Steve has 47 missed calls from his campaign staff, his family, and his political contacts. Some of them are probably honest congratulatory calls, but most of them, Steve thinks, are of the ‘what the hell are you doing’ variety.

His wife has also tried to call him several times, but she’s the only one who puts the pieces together enough to call Bucky’s cell. It rings in Steve’s pocket and he fumbles to pick it up with his numbed hand, thinking it might be Bucky’s dad getting back to him.

“Hello?” Sharon asks. Another flash of panic struggles to make itself known over all the other chaos in Steve’s brain.

“Sharon. It’s Steve,” he tells her. Even though he doesn’t love her, their relationship has always been civil.

What is Steve going to do about his marriage? What happens to Sharon now? What will she do if he brings Bucky home?

“Steve, are you okay?”

What does she know? What should he say? How much of this will get back to his family?

“I’m okay. Bucky’s not.” He tells her. “I’m with him.”

What does that mean for Bucky? Will Bucky be glad to see Steve? Is he still upset about Sharon?

(These are all questions to suppress the most important questions in his mind: Will Bucky be okay, and How can Steve keep this from ever happening again?)

“What happened?” Steve is cautious; this isn’t his story to tell.

“What did you hear?”

“Your mom told me that you ran out of your office after they made the call. She said something about someone you know overdosing. So it was Bucky,” she trails off. Steve says nothing as he switches the ice pack to his other hand. If he can do nothing else, he can keep Bucky from overheating.

“Steve, when he was living with us, was he…well, I don’t know what happened, but was it going on then?” A burst of anger makes Steve bite his tongue, even though he knows that this is the first of many people who are going to judge Bucky.

He doesn’t want to give her anything else about Bucky, and he doesn’t outright lie very well, so he says the first thing that crossed his mind when Sharon called.

“Sharon, I think you should end our marriage.”

“What,” she says sharply.

“I just think it should be you. I’m not trying to pawn this off on you, but I think it will make things much clearer, and easier on you, if you file for divorce.” She laughs, and the shrill of it doesn’t pass through the phone smoothly.

“I’m drinking champagne with my girlfriends, toasting you, the new House rep, and you’re asking me for a divorce?” It’s suddenly overwhelming to think of really having this conversation now, so Steve tries to deflect.

“We can talk about it later. I just wanted you to know what I’m thinking. I’m sorry,” he starts, but then he can’t put his finger on how exactly he’s wronged the woman on the phone. Bucky, in more ways than he can count, but Sharon knew exactly what she was signing up for.

“Fuck you, you asshole,” she tells him. Steve hears a catch in her voice like she’s not letting herself cry. “You can’t do this to me. I have built my life around playing the part that you asked me to play, and now you want me to fuck off and leave you to your trailer trash, drug addict boy toy?” And that’s how Steve’s wronged Sharon. He’s taken four years of decisions unrelated to the Rogers life, and she’ll never get those potential decisions back. He can’t find it in himself to feel too bad for her, though, as she spews poison against Bucky.

“Bucky needs me now. I’ll be happy to listen to you scream at me when he’s better-”

“I hope you two homos are very happy together,” she says bitterly. “And if you gave me any of his junkie diseases when we slept together, I will literally set you on fire.” And then she’s gone, the line dead in his hand.

Steve looks back at Bucky to see his eyes open and watery. He jumps in his chair a little, dropping the phone into his lap and taking Bucky’s face in his hands.  
“Bucky? Bucky, do you know where you are?” he asks. It hadn’t worked the last time Bucky had briefly regained consciousness, and the nurses told Steve to just wait it out. Steve is grateful that they haven’t kicked him out so far, but he guesses that it says something about just how pathetic and desperate he looks.

“Seve,” Bucky mumbles. He has something thick on his tongue, probably from where he’d been forced to throw up upon arrival at the ER.

“Bucky,” Steve breathes, ducking his head into Bucky’s hospital-gowned shoulder. “Baby. Wake up. Do you know where you are?”

Bucky lifts his head a little and looks around the room with unfocused eyes.

“Hospital,” he croaks, and then drops his head back against the pillow with a grimace. “Shit. Shit. Fuck.”

“You’re okay. Don’t worry, you’re okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky repeats the line from their phone call earlier. Then, “Is it…is it still the election day?”

Steve’s a little surprised that someone capable of snorting that much cocaine would be attuned to things like Election Day (and in a non-presidential year.) He gets an image of Bucky watching the polling numbers on TV while lining up a little trail of white powder before he realizes that there’s no way a house seat in New York got more than perfunctory coverage in Baltimore.

“It’s early, really early. Election Day was yesterday,” he tells Bucky. “I won, you know,” he adds, just in case Bucky hadn’t been cognizant when it happened.  
“I know,” Bucky nods at him. He blinks several times, trying to clear the watering in his eyes. “I saw. Right before.”

Steve runs his hand down Bucky’s arm and interlaces their fingers. His head is still resting on Bucky’s shoulder, though Steve’s holding most of its weight with his own neck.

“Where did you see it?” he asks, needing a painfully clear picture to torment himself with.

“On my laptop,” Bucky tells him. Steve’s tempted to ask what site Bucky had been following or streaming, when a terrible thought churns his stomach.

“Did you do it on purpose?” he has to ask.

“I don’t know,” Bucky tells him after a beat. Steve starts to cry, but tries to muffle it. He doesn’t want to add any guilt to someone who doesn’t know if he tried to commit suicide or not.

“Steve, you can go,” he hears a few minutes later. He looks up to see that Bucky’s wearing his twisted not-smile. “I’m okay here.” He looks anything but ‘okay,’ of course, and Steve’s not leaving for any amount of money right now.

“Hell no,” he grunts, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes like that will make them any less red.

“I bet there’s stuff you should be doing. Winning stuff, new job stuff,” Bucky prods. Steve feels a flash of annoyance at how stupid Bucky is being until he realizes that he hasn’t exactly told a conscious Bucky of his shift in priorities.

“I’m going to stay here with you,” he assures him. Bucky frowns.

“No, dude. You can’t pretend I have, like, pneumonia. Someone’s going to find out about this-”

“I’m going to stay here with you,” Steve repeats. He smiles at Bucky and tries to radiate his total commitment to his bedside. Instead of smiling back, Bucky gets agitated.

“Steve, stop fucking around. No one can know you’re here.” And how fucked up is it that, hours from a nearly-lethal overdose, Bucky’s priority is keeping Steve’s reputation in the clear.

“It’s alright,” Steve promises. Bucky squirms like he wants to say something else, but apparently he’s blown through his energy reserves by getting himself worked up, and he falls back to sleep with the protest on his lips.

Now that he’s talked to Bucky and he can finally believe that Bucky’s actively pulling through this, his mind is a little quieter. He can actually start addressing some of the questions rattling around his head.

He spends the next few hours typing emails to his campaign staff letting them know who he’s asking to go to Washington with him. He makes it clear that, in light of recent events, he will completely understand if they choose not to take him up on it.

Then he sends an email to his family’s main publicist. The subject line is “I owe you so many apologies.” He tells her that he wants the following information released: Steve Rogers, the newest representative for the 22nd district, asks for privacy in the wake of his longtime boyfriend’s illness. He looks forward to representing the people of his district come January.

He sends this text to his father: “Make Bucky’s overdose an allergic reaction or something. Sorry. Talk soon.”

He sends this text to his mother: “Damage control on Sharon ASAP. Sorry. Talk soon.”

He doesn’t look at his own emails or texts, not fortified enough for the maelstrom of disappointment and anger they inevitably contain.

Bucky wakes up again around eight in the morning, and Steve is just about to nod off. He shakes himself and calls the nurses for Bucky instead. It seems likely that Bucky’s forgotten whatever protest died on his lips as he sank into medical sleep hours ago, but, because Bucky is a stubborn fuck, he continues where he’s left off.

“People are going to wonder where you are. Does Sharon know you’re here? What responsibilities are you blowing off to be here?”

Steve just brings up the email to the publicist and reads it aloud, not sure how else he can convince Bucky that he’s staying.

“You moron,” Bucky tells him, legitimately angry.

“Nothing is as important to me as you are.”

“I didn’t ask you to do this.”

“You kinda did, Buck, with the OD,” Steve tells him. “But it made me see that this is where I need to be.”

Still thinking that he’s doing Steve a solid, Bucky asks the nurses to make Steve go away.

He goes back to Bucky’s apartment, because he has a key and he doesn’t know where else he’s going to sleep, and he sees the general disarray of Bucky’s things caused by several paramedics rushing into his home. Luckily, the door hasn’t been broken down, so a neighbor or the super must have been around with a key.

There is still a plate on the coffee table with a razor blade and a rolled-up dollar bill on it, and even though Steve had really meant to spend the next few hours catching up on sleep, he suddenly finds himself tearing through the apartment like a madman. He finds two baggies of white powder stashed in the living room and in the bedroom, and a number of lighters, pipes, and pills in other hiding places. He recovers a hypodermic needle from under Bucky’s sink, and he punches the wall and rips the skin off his knuckles.

He flushes the pills and powder down the toilet, and throws all the rest of the paraphernalia into a trash bag which he immediately takes down to the dumpster. He spends another hour making sure he hasn’t missed anything, but luckily, Bucky doesn’t have much more now than he did in college.

He finally showers in Bucky’s shower and falls asleep in Bucky’s bed. He wants to keep searching, or go back to the hospital, but he knows that he’s no good like this. And he needs to be at least at his medium for the total disaster his personal life is about to become.

When he shows up at the hospital that evening, Bucky has some of his color back and looks slightly less greasy than he’d appeared earlier.

“Did you get a sponge bath,” Steve teases him, offering an olive branch.

“You’re back,” Bucky whispers.

“I never left. I just went back to your apartment to lie down,” Steve tells him. Bucky looks uncomfortable at the thought, so Steve explains how it’s going to be now.

“I took the opportunity to clean some shit out of your apartment. And I’m going to be monitoring you, and I will kick your ass if you try to bring anything home.”

“How are you going to monitor me?” Bucky asks, slightly nervous like he’s picturing Secret Service guys following him around. It’s tempting, but Steve’s a far cry from having access to personal spies.

“I’m going to be living with you until we move to DC,” he tells him.

“I’m not moving back to DC. I hate it there.”

“That’s too bad, because you have proved that you make bad life choices when you’re not living with me. And I need to be in DC soon. So that’s where we’re going. Don’t expect the condo, though.” Bucky cusses at him, and Steve swoops in and kisses him while his mouth is open in a “fuck.”

“I’m going to take care of you until you can do it yourself. I’m sorry, but it needs to be tough love for a little while, Buck.” Bucky continues cursing until Steve adds, “And I do love you. So much.” He strokes the pad of his thumb across Bucky’s lips.

“I love you too,” Bucky mumbles back.

“Then don’t ever do that to me again,” Steve begs. He moves his hand down to grip at Bucky’s shoulder.

“I wasn’t trying to do this to you,” Bucky tells him softly. “I thought-I thought if I went away, it would make things easier for you. I wasn’t trying to get you to come back, or fuck things up for you. Honest.”

It kills Steve to hear it.

“Do I get to take you home soon?” he asks, for wont of a response to Bucky’s massive guilt complex.

“You don’t have to-”

“Bucky!” Steve finally snaps. “Shut the hell up. I’m taking you home. I’m putting you first. You can’t fight me on this; it’s my decision.

“Why?” Bucky questions him. “I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the why, Steve. This goes against everything I know about you.” Steve swallows another lump in his throat.

“Because after seven years, you don’t know that this is more important to me than any of that,” he says with as much honesty as he can muster. Bucky looks at him for a few minutes.

“They’re letting me go tomorrow morning. Don’t hover over me all night like a constipated mother hen,” Bucky tells him.

Steve and Bucky leave the hospital the next day, hand-in-hand, and as they walk past the photographers and reporters camped outside, Steve grips Bucky’s hand extra-tight to show him (and himself) that he’s not going to let go. Not now, not in January, never.

Steve feels for the first time in years that he’s following the path he needs to take.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dealing with an addicted loved one is really, really hard. Or, Steve helps Bucky through withdrawal while trying to prove himself to his new constituents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update: So this is now going to be a 7-part work. Thank you to those who left comments indicating that they would like to see more of this story and what they wanted to see.

As the incoming Representative of the 22nd district, Steve has a lot of reading to do.

“You have until I finish this 136-page financial report for Chenango County, and then you need to get up,” he tells the lump of blankets beside him where he’s sitting up in Bucky’s bed.

“Fuck Chenango County,” the blanket lump snarks.

“That seems to be the general attitude of everyone on their finance committee,” Steve tells him, accepting the haphazardly-directed anger. It’s an expected response, because Bucky hates everything lately barring Steve and his bed. And he’s not even combining them for best possible results.

“What do you want for breakfast?” he asks Bucky a few minutes later. He taps on the screen of his tablet to highlight a paragraph and save it for later.

“Blow.”

“What else do you want for breakfast?”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve lost 19 pounds since college. Pick something with carbs.” The lump groans and shifts to lie on its other side.

“Why does it matter when I’m going to puke it up, anyway?”

Steve reaches down to peel the blankets back from Bucky’s face.

“The book said that goes away pretty soon.” Bucky’s been scowling for the past three days, but as Steve mentions the loathed Book, he manages to screw his face even further into a look of displeasure.

Steve smoothes the messy, sweaty hair back against his scalp and can’t help smiling at the face he uncovers.

“Let me guess; ‘fuck the book?’”

“Fuck the book,” Bucky agrees tiredly. Steve maneuvers to kiss his slightly-damp forehead and goes back to his PDF. He sees the lump craftily inching his way, until Bucky’s head is resting on his leg. He’s still under the covers, which isn’t good for his core temperature. Steve doesn’t want to fight about it again, though, so he pets Bucky through the blanket and skims through tax reports.

“Shit, that was boring,” he exhales thirty minutes later. He extends his left arm to drop the tablet lightly before sliding his legs away from Bucky’s grasp and to the floor.

“Five more minutes,” Bucky pleads like a bleary-eyed teenager.

“Get up, Bucky,” Steve commands. He thwats Bucky’s ass through the covers to soften the order.

Steve’s got the skillet sizzling and the pancake batter mixed before Bucky finally emerges from the bedroom. Clad in boxer shorts, stubble, and his comforter, Steve thinks that he’s doing his best to stay in bed even as he moves through the kitchen.

Steve chatters about what he’s been reading while Bucky trudges around the kitchen, picks things up off the counter, and puts them down again. It’s part of a new restlessness that Steve’s never seen in him before, but which compels him to constantly finger his possessions when he’s not face-planted into the mattress.

It’s harmless, until Steve hears the heavy sound of something falling into the trashcan. He turns with a raised eyebrow to see Bucky pointedly looking at the wall.

“What did you just throw away?” Steve asks him. Bucky walks to the fridge and leans against it in response.

It’s the damn book, _Helping Your Loved One Get Sober,_ that Steve fishes out of the trashcan. The book whose first line reads, “Seeing your loved one go through withdrawal will test your patience more than you can imagine.” What a fucking true sentiment.

They eat pancakes on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, one of Bucky’s favorite places. Steve sits directly behind Bucky and pulls his smaller form into the V of Steve’s legs; it’s the only way they both fit.

Pressed against Bucky (through the damn comforter), Steve can feel him shaking as Bucky jabs pancake bits into his mouth.

“How’s the pain today?” Steve asks as he holds his own plate at an awkward angle.

“Still everywhere. Still hurts like a bitch,” Bucky replies.

Steve wishes there was a way they could split the pain. It’s a ridiculous thought, because pain is so obviously non-transferable, but he thinks that everyone has it when someone they love deeply is in the clutches of physical and emotional torment.

Later, Bucky pukes in the bathroom while Steve sits outside the closed door and reads about state testing data from his district.

“Bucky, do you remember taking the Regents?” he asks through the door as Bucky heaves and sputters into the toilet.

“Please go away and leave me a little dignity,” comes back to him from the bathroom. Steve moves to sit on the couch in the living room, but he makes sure that he can still hear when Bucky finishes.

“There’s no way you’re going to want me any more after you watch me throw up and change my dirty underwear, is there?” Bucky ponders later when he’s lying at Steve’s feet.

“I don’t care,” Steve promises.

“Bullshit. I’m disgusted with myself, when I can bring myself to care.” Steve shoves his bare foot against Bucky’s face, and Bucky recoils and whines.

“I guess I’ll have to be equally as disgusting.” It’s the first smile Bucky cracks since the hospital.

Three days later, Bucky’s status on the waiting list of Hands of Hope Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Facility gets bumped to patient status, and Steve helps him check himself in.

“Do not leave me here,” Bucky complains even as he signs his name to a release form. He’s eyeing a giant, pastel butterfly mural on the wall like it’s about to swoop at him.

“I think this place looks great,” Steve tells him with forced optimism. He’s also getting the heebie-jeebies from how upbeat this place is, but after a week of caring for Bucky, he knows that he’s woefully underqualified.

He kisses Bucky on the mouth before Bucky follows a smiling councilor into the living quarters, and Bucky seems surprised. It’s only then that Steve realizes he hasn’t kissed Bucky anywhere a lover would kiss him since the hospital.

Bucky stays checked-in to the facility for three weeks. Steve is allowed to visit him every Saturday, and the first time he goes in to see him, he grabs Bucky by the neck and shoves their lips together in a bruising kiss.

Not having to monitor Bucky gives him the free time to go back to DC and start to reassemble the nuclear explosion that is his personal life. He assumes that, by starting in DC, he’s putting off seeing his parents for another day. It says something about Steve that he would rather deal with the fire-breathing wife first, but it also says something about his mother when she catches him off guard in his own kitchen.

“Steven,” Sarah Rogers says coldly. She’s sitting in the breakfast nook and drinking a cup of coffee, and Steve freezes like a deer in the middle of the highway.

“Hi, mom. Is, uh, is Sharon here?” She shakes her head.

“She’s staying with her sister in New Jersey.” Steve wonders if the Carter sisters are more the effigy-burning or the voodoo doll type. “How are you, Steven?”

Steve runs a hand through his hair and absently remembers that he’s missed a haircut appointment.

“I’m okay, mom. Lots of stuff going on right now.” He sits down across from her and tries not to hunker down in the chair. “Bucky’s doing better. He’s in a rehab clinic in Baltimore, and he’s getting good reports.” Sarah blinks like she doesn’t know what to say to that, small-talk queen though she is.

“Good. I’m glad,” she finally tells him, and it sounds genuine enough. “I don’t know how to begin to tell you how crushed the family is, Steve.”

He nods and mumbles an apology. For some reason, he can’t look up from the placemat in front of him. It’s leopard print, and he has no idea when it arrived in his kitchen.

“I mean…if you were really going to do this, why couldn’t you have said this before we dragged Sharon into it?”

“Like dad would have let me.”

“Clearly it’s not a matter of ‘letting.’” She sighs, pained, and drinks more coffee. Her lipstick doesn’t smudge on the white lip of the mug, and Steve remembers Sharon venting about the physical impossibility of that fact.

“I really thought I could do it without hurting anyone. I didn’t mean for- I didn’t know Sharon would get possessive.”

“Are you actually suggesting this is Sharon’s fault?” She’s using a voice that Steve hasn’t heard since he’d been caught drinking at his uncle’s beach house when he was fifteen.

“No, I’m not,” Steve says as he rubs the bridge of his noise. “It’s obviously my fault. I didn’t get what kind of strain it would put on her to be married to me.”

“She wants a lot of money to keep her mouth shut.”

“How much?”

“It’s been taken care of.” Steve feels simultaneously grateful and embarrassed. He may come from a dynasty family, but the Rogers have made their reputation on politics, not on business. They don’t have unlimited money to splash around to ex-wives. He also knows that he needs to step out from behind the protection of his family and handle his own shit, but now his parents are already covering for him.

He feels like a lowlife parasite.

“She wants a divorce, right?”

“She’s already filed.”

“And what’s the official line?”

“She knew about the affair, and you two got married because you were afraid of the repercussions of being publicly ‘out.’” She says ‘out’ a little strangely, like it’s a word that hadn’t entered her vocabulary until very recently. “It was a business relationship, not an emotional one. No one’s heart got broken.” It’s not too far from the truth.

“So I don’t look like a dog in the tabloids?” Sarah laughs unkindly.

“Oh, sweetheart. You look awful in the tabloids. You cheated on your wife, with a man, who is addicted to drugs.” Steve flushes, even though it’s no different from what he’d anticipated.

“A lot people want me to resign before I’ve even started the job,” he tells her, which is the one thing that he knew about before this conversation. He’s ignored most of his emails and avoided the TV and news sites, but he’s seen enough subject lines to know about this.

“If you let them kick you out of office before you’ve served one day, you’ll never get elected again,” Sarah tells him stonily.

“I know that.” He stands up and goes to pour himself his own cup of coffee. “And there’s no way in hell I’m letting that happen.”

They talk about the reactions of family members and friends, the moves that Steve will have to make to reassure his brand-new constituents, and Steve’s plans to move back to DC.

“Your father doesn’t want that man living in the condo,” she tells him, which is the first that either of them have mentioned Joe Rogers.

“How much do apartments cost in DC?” he asks. He’s never needed to know.

Ten days later, Bucky signs his release forms as Steve looks on like a proud parent.

He takes Bucky to their new apartment in DC. Steve had forgone the nicer apartment in the shady area for the cramped apartment in the nicer area, because he knows that he can’t watch Bucky 24/7, and he’s afraid of shady people trying to worm their way into Bucky’s circle. He knows, obviously, that Bucky has drug contacts in DC, but at least their 80-year-old neighbor probably isn’t going to try to sell to him.

The whole point of getting Bucky away from Baltimore, away from the place he’d down-spiraled without Steve, is to get away from those memories and those patterns. Fresh starts are very important according to Steve’s book and the rehab facility literature, so he sets up their new living space lovingly with inexpensive Ikea furniture and some second-hand things from the shop down the street.

He’s never really been on a budget before, so living’s going to be tight until Steve gets sworn in.

Bucky walks around the apartment and looks at everything.

“This is a shoebox, Steve. We’re going to practically be living on top of one another.”

“We used to share a dorm room,” Steve jokes, panic blooming in his gut that Bucky doesn’t like the home he’s made for them.

Luckily, Bucky smirks at him.

“At least we don’t have to share the bathroom with 30 other guys.” He goes to look in said bathroom, and it doesn’t take him long to see that the doorknob looks out of place with the rest of the apartment. He runs his fingers over it, and quickly realizes that it doesn’t lock. His eyes dart across the living area to the bedroom door, whose doorknob Steve has also replaced.

“I’m loving the level of trust here, Steve,” he says through clenched teeth.

Steve pulls him into his arms and buries his nose in Bucky’s hair.

“I know,” he tells him and tries to convey a lot with just that statement.

Bucky wants to get a job right away, because he’s blown most of his savings on chasing a high, being unemployed, and attending a private rehab clinic. He doesn’t want to live off of Steve any more than Steve wants to live off his parents, and Steve can’t deny that it would help. None of the big robotics firms want anything to do with him, though, and Steve suspects that he’s not getting all the details about Bucky’s parting ways with his last job.

He gets a part-time job in a repair shop, fixing vacuum cleaners, TVs, and kitchen appliances, and even though Steve suspects that his pride has taken a blow, Bucky’s eyes light up when he gets his fingers in the wires and gears of any piece of machinery.

They settle into a routine: they get up at 8 and drink coffee, and at 8:40, Steve walks Bucky to work. Steve goes to a coffee shop, or to the library, or to a park, and studies up on District 22 until it’s time to go pick Bucky up at 3:30. They go back to the apartment to read, talk, or play video games, and Bucky usually makes them dinner because cooking isn’t in Steve’s wheelhouse.

Then they go to bed. Every night, Steve curls in close to Bucky and kisses his neck, and Bucky shoves him away or verbally tells him to get off. He doesn’t object to Steve draping an arm around him as they sleep, so Steve takes the contact and tries not to think too much about why Bucky doesn’t seem to want anything sexual with him.

He still makes inroads. Sliding up behind Bucky to knead his shoulders while he’s cooking, barging into Bucky’s shower and helping him wash, catching his hand and kissing each knuckle sometimes when Bucky’s cracking them irritably. He makes sure to lay a kiss on Bucky’s lips at least once a day, and he’s never rebuffed when he does it outside of the bedroom. Bucky doesn’t seem to mind any of it, but he never initiates it. Steve’s become the sole romantic and sexual instigator in their relationship.

He jerks off in the bathroom one night, remember a younger, happier Bucky who’d crept up Steve’s body while he was on the phone with his mother and started unbuttoning his shirt and kissing down his stomach just to be a pain. By the time he’d reached the button on Steve’s jeans, the phone call had been abruptly ended, and he’d sucked Steve off like he was getting the better end of the deal.

It’s masturbatory fodder, definitely, but it also leaves a twinge in the back of Steve’s mind, an unexplored wonder if Bucky will ever instigate anything sexual between them again. He drowns the thought in thousands of pages of laws that have been passed in his district for the past 70 years.

When Steve starts spending more time in the outgoing representative’s office to shadow him and ask a barrage of questions, he thinks Bucky will appreciate having more alone time. It’s not like the past month hasn’t suffocated the both of them. But Bucky crawls into his lap the first time he comes back from spending the day at the Capitol, and he’s so relieved that Bucky still seeks him out for comfort that he pushes his luck and asks the question he’s been avoiding.

“Why don’t you want me anymore, Buck?” he asks, making sure there’s no condemnation in his voice. Bucky shoves his face into Steve’s shirt, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to respond.

“If we have sex, it will make it too real,” Bucky says at least ten minutes later. Steve shakes himself out of the stupor he’s fallen into while stroking figure eights into Bucky’s back. “You can still get out of this right now. I have the apartment, a job, and no one really knows what I look like.”

Steve’s dumbfounded, but Bucky isn’t done.

“I mean, I know there’s a shit storm going on about you right now. We keep the TV on at the shop, and I’ve seen some stuff. But once you show them what you can do, they’ll forget about me, and I can just quietly go away. Or you could find another guy and bring him out…everyone will seriously love you, Steve. You can use this gay thing, and I really don’t think people won’t vote for you-”

“Shut up,” Steve says, still stunned, to cut off Bucky’s ramble.

“My point is, you don’t have to stay with me because of this. I wasn’t trying to get this, and now that I’m doing better, it’s okay. It’s really okay, Stevie,” he says with a weak smile, pulling out Steve’s nickname to better manipulate him.

Steve stands up and dumps Bucky unceremoniously on the rug.

“Do you seriously think that you guilted me into this? You think that I want out of this, of us, because of my career?”

“Well, not now,” Bucky actually tries to calm him down, not moving to stand up, “but you will. We both know it. I just want to thank you for what you did for me by not complicating it.” Steve gapes, then crouches down to scoop Bucky into his arms.

“What are you doing? Wait, Steve-”

He awkwardly hefts Bucky up to chest-height and makes his way for the bedroom. It’s not that hard, because Bucky’s only gained back about five pounds in rehab and living with Steve.

He drops Bucky onto the bed and stands there for a second before he pulls his shirt over his head.

“I have clearly not been sending you the right signals, or your stupid brain is crossing them and mixing you up,” he tells Bucky as he kneels on the edge of the bed and starts to crawl toward him. Bucky’s eyes widen and he scoots backwards.

“I fucked up when I didn’t come out in college,” he tells him, still advancing.

“I fucked up when I asked you to keep this a secret.” He gets his hands on Bucky’s legs and skims his thumbs up the insides of Bucky’s thighs.

“I fucked up when I let my family cover it up,” he says as he cups Bucky’s thickening cock through his sweatpants.

“I fucked up when I married Sharon.” He kisses Bucky’s forehead, nose, and cheeks, before zeroing in on his lips.

“And I fucked up when I let you break up with me in Baltimore. And when I didn’t check in on you. And when I let you self-destruct to protect myself,” he pleads as he kisses Bucky over and over again, his eyes watering and threatening to leak.

“But being with you the last two months, that wasn’t a fuck up. That was me finally being honest with myself and with everyone. I am,” he pushes Bucky down into the mattress and slips his hands under Bucky’s shirt to rub up his warm sides, “not going anywhere, Bucky Barnes.”

And then the tears do start to slip. Because, “I just don’t know how to make you understand that, I guess.”

Bucky brushes the tears aside with his fingertips and kisses Steve back.

“You’re such an idiot,” he says, his voice blown like he’s awed by this knowledge.

“Can we fuck now?” Steve asks roughly, trying to cover up the emotions still flowing between them and move away from the embarrassing moment. Bucky laughs and runs his fingers down Steve’s back to his ass.

“I guess we can fuck now.”

It’s a fumble of kissing and gripping and Steve rolling off of Bucky to struggle with his pants while Bucky laughs and kicks off his sweats, expounding the virtues of elasticized clothing.

Steve tries to kiss every inch of Bucky’s body, and when he gets to Bucky’s cock, standing swollen and upright amid a thatch of unkempt hair, he laughs and Bucky blushes.

“Personal grooming might have fallen by the wayside,” he admits as Steve scritches his pubic hair and takes Bucky’s cock into his mouth.

The hot, soft skin tastes as heady as he remembers, and he lets himself salivate, getting Bucky slick and even harder. He absorbs each of Bucky’s moans like a dying man might fixate on water, storing them up where there’s been nothing for over a year.

When Bucky comes, he tastes different than Steve remembers, and he realizes with a shock that it’s the absence of cocaine he tastes. He decides to tell Bucky later, though, because this is about them and not about the drugs or the politics or any of it.

Steve opens the nightstand next to the bed and finally uncaps the bottle of lube he’d bought for them when they first moved in. He slicks up his fingers and reaches behind himself to slip just one into his hole. It burns a little, but Steve can’t focus on it with Bucky’s eyes going dark and confused simultaneously.

“Wait, are you sure you don’t want to do me?”

“Pretty sure you’re the top in this relationship, Bucky.” He adds another finger slightly before he’s ready, suddenly convinced that Bucky’s going to bow out if he doesn’t get his cock inside Steve soon.

“Not always. And I,” he trails, gesturing down at himself. Steve doesn’t get it.

“You what? Fuck, this feels good,” he adds to convince Bucky. His body opens just as nice as it used to, and he’s starting to tingle all over in anticipation.

“Don’t make me say it, Steve.”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s up to three fingers, and he just needs another minute. But Bucky isn’t looking at him, so Steve reaches forward with his lube-wet hand and runs his slick fingers up and down Bucky’s cock a few times. “But I’m pretty sure it’s just you being a dumbass.”

He scoots forward on his knees and positions himself over Bucky’s cock.

“I was a hot little thing when I went to college. I had muscles and stuff, shit,” he breathes as Steve sinks down. As Steve catches his breath and adjusts to Bucky’s girth, he pinches at a bump of abdominal.

“I still see muscles.”

“I stopped taking care of myself,” Bucky starts to protest as Steve pulls almost all the way off and then sinks back down. Bucky’s breath stutters.

“So we’ll join a gym. I haven’t exactly had time to work out lately either. Doesn’t mean you’re not fucking beautiful,” Steve breathes as he starts to build a rhythm. He’s looking at the sheen of sweat beginning to emerge on Bucky’s chest, and not his face, so the rough, wet inhale catches him off guard.

Bucky’s looking at him like he’s the best thing ever, and Steve blushes for that, even as he rides Bucky’s cock.

“You are so annoying. Now I have to get mushy with you all the time, because you forgot how fucking obsessed I am with you and how amazed I am that you’re mine,” he pretends to complain.

Bucky smiles at him and starts to push up to match his rhythm.

Two days later, Steve tries to smile at the cameras and reporters and general sea of hungry interest as they ask him question after question. His mother had set up this press conference and sent him a text simply saying ‘this is a test; study hard.’ He’s barely looked up from his tablet since.

“Mr. Rogers, what do you have to say to the people who feel your personal life compromises your ability to effectively serve in public office?” He takes a sip of his water, answering the same question that’s been asked three different ways so far.

“I don’t think it affects my ability to serve at all. Members of congress all have families, and those families have issues, and they find ways to take care of both. Having a loved one dealing with an issue, such as addiction, doesn’t compromise your ability to represent your constituents and defend their interests. It does humanize you, and help you remember that there are real people with real problems who need you to make their voices heard in government.”

“Do the people of New York want to be associated with a recently-outed politician going through a messy divorce?”

“I think the people of New York have a lot of respect for leaders who try to live openly and honestly, even if it took me a while to get to the place where I was confident enough do to that.”

“Did you purposefully deceive people to win the election?”

“No, I did not. The timing of the shake-ups in my life coincided with the election, but it wasn’t because I wanted to hide that part of myself specifically so I could get elected.”

“Do you think you would have won the election had this story broken before people went to the polls?”

“Let’s see in two years.”

The next reporter is clearly from his own district, and she adjusts her glasses before reading a question off her pad.

“What upcoming laws do you plan on voting for to help your constituents in the 22nd district?”

“Thank you for asking. Well, there’s a new tax bill that we’re going to see in February which will make it easier for counties to disperse their funds to public works and schools before it goes into county investments. For example, in Chenango county…” he continues, explaining how this law will close some loopholes which diverted tax money to bad investments and prevented it from allowing hikes to public agencies. And then he’s asked about school systems, public transportation, fracking, rising costs of electricity in Tioga, construction issues in Cortland, and many, many questions about recent laws passed or struck down in his district.

Steve smiles and answers each question, feeling the tone of the conference shift as he throws out facts and figures. Even the reporter finally smiles at him, pleasantly surprised, and Steve says he can take one more question.

“So you are absolutely, 100% going to swear in next week?”

Steve stands up and buttons his blazer.

“I am 110% ready to do the job I was elected to do. I hope my critics follow my voting record in the upcoming months and weigh my dedication to my job, and to them, ahead of the things going on in my personal life.” He waves, and walks off the stage.

Bucky’s waiting for him in the car.

“Do I have to beat up some mean reporters?”

Steve kisses him.

“I don’t think so. I might, might have just passed the test.”

“Well, don’t get too cocky, there are like a million more tests.”

“Good thing I have you,” he tells Bucky as he starts the car. He sees Bucky smile out of the corner of his eye. “I mean to quiz me and stuff.”

Bucky smacks his arm.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve’s palms are sweaty, but his father taught him never to wipe them on the front of an expensive pair of pants.

“There’s no gesture that says more clearly, ‘I’m a scared man, and I don’t feel confident about what I’m doing,’” Governor Rogers had drilled into his son.

Steve isn’t scared, and he’s very confident about taking the Oath of Office, but he still finds himself jittering with nerves. It must be because the senior members of the House keep sneaking looks at him and gossiping behind their hands.

“Members-elect, please raise your right hands and repeat after me,” the Speaker’s voice rings out through the sound system. The group of men and women clustered at the front of the chamber raise their hands, and Steve thinks that his isn’t the only glistening palm.

“I, state your name,” the Speaker directs.

“I, Steven Rogers,” he repeats dutifully.

“Do solemnly affirm.”

“Do solemnly affirm.”

“That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Steve thinks that whoever was responsible for breaking this oath into chunks did a shitty job.

He continues to parrot the Speaker in reciting the Oath that he’s basically memorized.

“…and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

They finish the oath, and the House breaks into polite applause. There are so many Representatives, 435 to be precise, that most of them will never learn the names of all their colleagues. They will familiarize themselves with the Representatives who sit nearest to them on the floor, so people from their home states, and the Representatives on their committees, and that’s it.

Steve is determined that by the time he leaves the House, they’ll all know his name, and not because of any scandals or nepotism. This is the start of a journey, he thinks as he takes his seat and the Speaker starts to talk about “just a little housekeeping, ladies and gentlemen.” A journey that begins by holding on to his position with both hands.

After the session adjourns, Steve meets with his new staff and some family members headed by his mother in his new offices. These two categories overlap in places; Steve’s been asked to find a paid staffer job for his cousin, Darcy, and an unpaid internship for his much-less competent cousin, Peter.

Even in disgrace, Steve’s family can’t stay away from their newest gift horse. And Peter truly is good at getting coffee for Steve.

They’re having hors d’oeuvres while organizing the office, a pragmatic celebration right up Sarah’s alley. Steve’s playing a silly mnemonics game to remember all of his staffer’s names, and they seem good-natured enough when he calls them things like Aaron-earring and Will-watch-upside-down. Most of them are new to Steve, recommended by family friends, because nearly all of his campaign staff had declined their job offers after The Incident, as Steve just heard his Aunt refer to it.

“Hey, am I interrupting?” a voice comes from the doorway, and Steve whips his head around to see Bucky hovering uncertainly between the receiving room and the main office. He’s shocked to see him, because Bucky hadn’t given any indication that he wanted to be remotely part of the craziness surrounding Steve’s swearing-in.

Now Steve highly suspects that he’s an asshole for not even asking.

“Hey, James,” he says in a panic. He definitely wasn’t prepared to introduce Bucky to his new staff and family, even if Bucky already knows his mom. Bucky raises an eyebrow and Steve kicks himself. He has no idea why he did that.

Bucky looks amazing, which is part of why Steve is so flustered. He’s spent several months with a sweat pants-clad Bucky, and his job at the repair shop doesn’t require anything more than jeans and a polo. His hair is long enough to cover his eyes, and he hasn’t been putting product in it so much as letting it flop to one side of his head.

Today, though, Bucky is in a suit that Steve didn’t know he owned. It’s not perfectly tailored, so it’s off the rack, but it does some pretty amazing things for…well, all of him. His hair is combed to one side, but today it looks more GQ than sexy hobo, and he’s all clean and nice-smelling and even his shoes are shiny

Steve wants, but this is an entirely inappropriate time. They’re in the middle of something right now that will in all probability set Bucky back if he continues to fuck it up and act anything less than thrilled to see him. Really, he is thrilled, in a ‘why-didn’t-you-call-me-first’ kind of way.

“Come in and meet everyone,” he says levelly, playing it off like he’d known Bucky would show up. “Everyone, this is my fellow.” And shit, he choked on the word ‘boyfriend.’ If he’d maybe practiced this first…

“James Barnes,” Bucky says, extending his hand to Aaron-earring. He smiles suavely and overconfidently, and it’s then that Steve realizes Bucky is just as nervous as he is.

“Hon, this is my cousin Darcy, her mom Delaney, you know my mom, Sarah, this is Bill, he’s not really family but he worked for my dad my whole life, and this is one of my new staffers, Julie, she used to work for Senator Coulson, who’s right over here…” He blazes rapid-fire through the introductions and hopes he’s got everyone’s name right. Bucky looks a little glazy-eyed, but he’s paying enough attention to notice the only omission.

“And you are?” he asks the last member of Steve’s assembled menagerie of employees and blood relatives.

“That’s Peter,” at least four people say in unison. Peter gives a little wave as he continues to refill the staplers.

“Peter gets us coffee,” Steve adds lamely, not wanting Bucky to think he’s devaluing someone on his staff.

“Ah, so the most important job,” Bucky jokes lamely.

No one knows what to say next, but the staffers who aren’t emotionally involved in the family drama at least go back to what they were doing.

“James, would you like any hors d’oeuvres?” Sarah offers sweetly. So ‘James’ is a thing now. Steve knows that Bucky hasn’t gone by ‘James’ since Kindergarten, and even then, it’d been ‘Jimmy.’

“No thanks. I just wanted to see the office and the Honorable Steve Rogers,” he answers just as politely. And Steve can deal with this attitude from, well, most of the people he knows, but not from his crude, crass, at times even vulgar Bucky.

“I have something to show you,” Steve says, putting down the file that’s been in his hand during the whole interaction and walking into his personal office. Bucky follows, and Steve sees several heads watching raptly through the open door. Closing it would send all the wrong messages, however.

“It’s on the computer,” he says loudly. Bucky looks completely bemused, and Steve doesn’t blame him. He logs on, forgetting the password twice before getting it right, and opens up a Microsoft Word document.

Bucky walks around the desk to look at the blank document, and raises an eyebrow.

“Um, okay,” he says as Steve starts to frantically type.

‘I am an idiot times 10000000000000000000’ he types, holding the zero key down. A smile twitches at Bucky’s lips.

‘i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry. Caught off guard. Will be smoother next time.’

“That’s real interesting, Steve,” Bucky drawls. He’s mostly dropped the overly polite attitude from earlier.

‘I love you and thank you for coming,’ Steve types next. Bucky’s grinning now, and he rests a hand on Steve’s shoulder lightly. It inspires what Steve types next.

‘Want to fuck you in the suit.’

“That’s a nice desk. Oak?” Bucky asks innocently. Steve types a ‘shocked’ emoticon face.

Obviously, they don’t close the door and fuck on Steve’s new desk, and Bucky gets put to work pulling and organizing files left by the last representative.

Surrounded by Bucky, his family members (the ones who are speaking to him), and his new staff, Steve feels a lightness that hasn’t visited him in months. He can’t believe, sometimes, that he made it to the other side of something he’d been terrified of ever since he saw X-Men at the age of 12 and got hard for Wolverine.

They take the Metro home together around ten, hand-in-hand, and Steve is completely absorbed in his fantasy of grabbing Bucky’s tie and reeling him in for some filthy, open-mouthed kisses. He sees two men in baggy clothing smoking cigarettes and leaning against a platform wall as they board their train, and he doesn’t really make much of the way Bucky has fixated on them until they’re moving.

“Were those dealers?” he asks Bucky, tightening the grip he has on Bucky’s hand.

“Who?” Bucky tries to play dumb. Steve shifts his jaw and glares at him.

“They might have been. You have to talk a little, start up a conversation, to know for sure.” Steve wants to grab ahold of Bucky’s tie for a totally different reason now, to tether Bucky to him permanently so he can never be more than a foot away.

When they get home, Steve’s too worked up to do anything more than grope Bucky’s suit-clad ass appreciatively and head to bed.

Being a Representative is time-consuming and sometimes wearing. He feels like he’s constantly scrambling to learn everything he can about a new bill, only for something to hold it up and leave him waiting for days, if not weeks, to vote on it. He loves it, though. He likes studying up on issues, reading hundreds of memos in a day, and meeting with people from his new district. He likes the camaraderie that develops in his office, taking to his staffers about their lives, and watching Peter do everything he can to get out of actual work. And, in all honesty, he likes having a title before his name and finally being someone other than “Governor Rogers’s kid.”

He’s interviewed by a few reporters who ask him incredibly invasive questions about ‘James,’ and he politely but firmly lets them know that James is private. It continues to happen until his mother calls him up and requests to be put on speakerphone.

“Until people know who James is, they’re going to assume whatever they want about him, and it’s not going to be good,” she admonishes both Steve and Bucky. She sees to have forgotten ever knowing James by a different name when dropping by Steve’s college for lunch or coffee.

“You two need to decide what you want the public to know about James, but it needs to be more than ‘no comment, no comment.’ James has a very sweet side to him, and people should know that along with the…other things,” she says, so maybe she does remember.

Against Steve’s protests, Bucky agrees to do an interview with _The Post._ They meet the reporter at a café, and Steve swears that by the end of the interview, she wants a date with Bucky more than she wants a story.

The story runs with a picture of Steve and Bucky sitting at the café table. Steve’s head is buried in his tablet, because the reporter hadn’t wanted to talk to him, and Bucky is biting his lip and looking so very fuckable in his dark green button-down with his hair falling in his eyes.

Unsurprisingly, the female readers of _The Post_ love Bucky, and many of the men are won over by his shop talk about his dreams of building prostheses for disabled vets.

“Where do you think your desire to work with disabled veterans comes from?” the reporter had asked, and Bucky had responded, “From my dad. He lost an arm in Vietnam, and he struggled with the hooks and the fake plastic arms and so many terrible prostheses for years.” And any reader who doesn’t already love Bucky falls for him with that line.

Steve still tries to shield Bucky from the people who recognize them in public or write to Steve’s office, wanting to know more about James.

“Does it bother you that they’re all calling you James?” Steve asks after they get approached while jogging around the national mall.

“Not really. It’s actually kind of a layer between me and them,” Bucky tells him. But even though he likes the layer, he’s not shy at all about talking to his fans or having his picture taken by Washington paparazzi. Steve eases off on shielding duty after a while.

One night, they’re sitting on their tiny balcony and trying to see some stars through the commuter smog.

“Our next place needs to have a nicer balcony,” Steve tells Bucky as he takes a pull of his beer. Bucky blows smoke back in his face and Steve tells him, “sprinklers,” an inside joke going on seven years.

“Our next place had better have enough room in the bathroom for two grown men to piss and brush their teeth at the same time without bumping asses,” Bucky comments back.

“Maybe enough kitchen space so that the trash doesn’t have to go in the living room,” Steve adds.

“Fuck, it’s not like you’re a senator, Steve. Dream small.” He laughs from his belly and reaches out to finger the strip of skin exposed by Bucky’s shirt as it rides up.

“Hey, I need to tell you something,” Bucky says before Steve can make a play for more skin. He suddenly sounds uncomfortable and small.

“What?” Steve asks, his humor still tinting his tone.

“Uh, remember how the councilors at the rehab place told me that I was supposed to tell you if I was thinking about getting blow?” It’s not funny anymore. Steve doesn’t take his hand off Bucky, just because he suddenly needs to anchor the two of them together.

“I’m listening.” Bucky sighs.

“Well, today, when I was at the grocery store of all places, this kid came up to me and wanted to say something.”

“A little kid?”

“No, like a teenage kid, or a college-aged kid. He came up to me when I was looking at fruit snacks and told me that I had inspired him.” Bucky inhales from his cigarette again, and Steve watches the bright orange tip like it’s one of the stars he can barely make out.

“And I was like, great man, good to hear it, but he really wanted to tell me something. He told me that his boyfriend’s been using for years, and when it came out that your boyfriend was in the hospital for an allergic reaction, he knew right away that it was bullshit. But then you made the statement that I had ODed, and he realized that he had to stand by his man, or something like that.”

“I remember the hospital leaking that piece of information and basically being cornered to confirm it,” Steve says, unsure how to respond to the story.

“So I stood there like a moron and I said all this shit about how important it is to get clean, and how happy I am living clean, and how I never even think about doing blow because I’m so goddam happy with you, and you know what? I was lying. I was thinking about doing blow as we were talking.”

Steve reaches over to take the cigarette from his fingers. He doesn’t know if he’s going to ground it out or take a hit himself.

“And ‘think about it’ means what exactly?”

“It means thinking about,” Bucky says impatiently. “Like, ah, blow. I remember blow. I’d feel so good right now under these shitty grocery store lights, with all of these basically identical foods that I have to somehow choose between, if I had just a little bit of blow. I wouldn’t even snort it,” he tells Steve as Steve holds the burning cigarette in between his thumb and ring finger and feels something squeezing at his heart, “I would just put a little on my gums and just that, just take the edge off.”

“Okay,” Steve says flatly. “Okay. Thank you for telling me that.” He suddenly flings the cigarette to the parking lot below in a burst of anger, and he should feel lucky he doesn’t set any grass on fire. “I want you to tell me when you’re feeling like this.”

“I’m literally feeling like this all the time,” Bucky tells him, unimpressed with his brief rage.

“So what’s different about this time that you felt the need to tell me?” And to that, Bucky looks ashamed.

“I kinda made a plan.”

“A plan?” Steve echoes.

“A plan to get some blow.”

“Oh my god,” Steve says as he leans his forehead against the metal bars of the balcony. “Did you go through with it?” He feels a little hysterical and a little nauseous.

“No,” Bucky tells him, almost proudly.

Steve is very, very proud of him, yes, but it doesn’t make any of this okay. He hasn’t been so blind as to think that Bucky is past this; he knows that Bucky will always be an addict. Steve will never be able to trust Bucky beyond a shadow of a doubt to take care of himself, but it’s been nice not actively thinking about it lately.

“Tell me the plan,” Steve says when the metal bars cut into his forehead enough to jog him back to the present.

“You are really not going to like it,” Bucky warns.

“Tell me the fucking plan, Bucky,” Steve growls. He’s bungling this; he’s not supposed to be angry at the addict. He’s supposed to be encouraging, loving, and helpful.

“So there’s this museum guard at the Smithsonian who can hook you up. Someone told me about him a while ago, but I never bought from him.”

“Is this an urban legend, the drug dealing guard, or is it for real?”

“It’s for real,” Bucky tells him. “I went there after I finished shopping.”

Steve goes inside and collapses on the couch with his head in his hands.

“You said it was just a plan, Bucky!” he yells in the direction of the balcony. He doesn’t know if Bucky’s followed him into the apartment or not.

“I didn’t buy anything. I just watched him and saw enough to confirm that he’s real,” Bucky says from a few feet to his right. “Do you want to hear the rest of the plan or not?” Steve grunts and nods, wanting to get it all out like ripping off a Band-Aid.

“So you know how I don’t have an ATM card so that I can’t make cash withdrawals,” Bucky says, a little testily.

“You agreed to that,” Steve points out.

“I only had a few bucks and a credit card on me. But there was this gift shop in the museum, and a bunch of shit there, and I thought that I could buy some of it with the credit card and then sit outside on the bench and sell it to people for a cash discount.”

“Which Smithsonian?” Steve thinks to ask.

“American History.”

“What does the guy, the guard look like?”

“He’s tall and dark-haired. White, like 50. Lot of hair on his arms,” Bucky replies.

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Steve says again as he hugs Bucky to him. He kisses his face and tries to convey how happy he is that Bucky’s safe and healthy and with him, but the panic is still roiling through his stomach. It travels up his esophagus as he rides Bucky on the sofa, and he has to jump off and run to the bathroom to dry-heave, which kills the mood faster than a naked Rush Limbaugh.

The next day, he calls the Museum of American History and uses the weight of his office to have the guard searched and subsequently fired. Steve never asks Bucky if he knows.

Bucky reports a hankering about once a month after that. Sometimes he has a very specific plan to get cocaine, and sometimes he wants it so badly that he can’t formulate a plan. Steve is never sure what the best thing for him to do is, but he rereads the book for the 12th time and it tells him to be supportive, to remind Bucky that he loves him, and to suggest professional help. Bucky is dead-set against more professional help, apparently believing that one bout of rehab is acceptable but two is for the weak, so Steve is the extent of his support.

He ends up taking a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, he showers Bucky with love and affection. He puts little notes in Bucky’s lunch and emails him flirty, sappy emails throughout the workday. On the other hand, he tries to achieve omnipresence and omnipotence, and constantly adjusts his hours so that he can surprise Bucky at the shop during his break or immediately after work. ‘I can show up wherever, whenever,’ is the message he wants to get across. ‘I am fucking watching you.’

The two messages might cancel each other out, but Steve doesn’t see any changes in behavior (or in the taste of Bucky’s spunk) which suggest substances, so he thinks he’s doing a small bit of help.

By the time July 4th and his 26th birthday roll around, Steve is exhausted from both Capitol Hill and Bucky-watching. His mother throws the family’s annual 4th of July barbeque/Steve’s birthday party cook-out, and Steve can feel her relief that she doesn’t have to try to separate the two events this year. Steve’s been getting enough good press for his committee work and his favorable standing with the minority leader that most of the family is pretending they never had an issue with him or his handsome companion.

(Steve has to laugh when his grandmother refers to Bucky as such; she’s pretty famous among the cousins for calling Bucky a ‘coked up, twinkie man-whore,’ to which the family patriarch, Grant Rogers, had responded, ‘what does twinkie mean?’)

“Steven, James,” she says, kissing both of their cheeks as they show up at the Governor’s mansion with ice pops as is Steve’s customary contribution.

Bucky looks a little shell-shocked that he’s finally attending this event after hearing Steve talk about it for years.

“Sarah, this is a, like wow, this is a crazy house,” he tries to be polite before his Brooklyn catches up to him.

“It’s home,” she says a little defensively, but always dipped in honey.

“Who’s here yet?” Steve asks her as they walk through the house to the back patio. She rattles off a list of names, and Bucky unconsciously wipes his hands on his pants when he hears her say, “Joe.” Sarah notices the action, and Steve glares at her with the injunction not to say anything.

“Oh, hey Steve. Ice pops, cool,” Peter says as he wanders out of the kitchen in swim trunks. Bucky relaxes a little at the familiar face. “Hey, can you come tell my dad that I’m a model employee?”

“You’re really not,” Steve tells him, Peter more his cousin than his intern in this setting.

They keep up the banter as they walk out back, and there’s Governor Joe Rogers, sitting on a patio recliner and guzzling a Bloody Mary.

This is a big moment for the three of them. Steve hasn’t spoken civilly to his father since the night he was elected, and Bucky hasn’t interacted with the man at all.

“Hi, dad,” Steve says, moving forward to shake his hand. Joe puts the drink down and stands up like he’s preparing himself for a confrontation.

“Steven.” They shake hands, and Joe scrutinizes Steve from beneath a Mets hat.

“You remember Bucky?” he asks, reaching backwards and pulling Bucky up to stand next to him.

“I thought you were going by James now,” Joe grunts, looking at Bucky’s light blue summer suit and the hair that he’s finally cut short. Steve is surprised by how much he misses Bucky’s longer hair.

Bucky sticks his hand out, and Joe takes it after a beat. “It is James. Bucky’s a nickname, sir.”

“Like Stupid Steve,” one of Steve’s brothers pipes up from where he is reclining by the pool.

“Or Sissy Steve,” chimes in the other one from the fire pit.

“I believe it’s Sexy Steve,” Steve corrects as one of his younger cousins runs to him and demands to be picked up.

“Language, Steven,” his mother chirps at him as she sidles up to stand beside Joe and beam at him approvingly. Steve has no doubt that his father was in the metaphorical doghouse over his strained relations with Steve. “Can I offer either of you something to drink?”

“We’ll get it, mom,” Steve assures her, and pulls Bucky off to get the other overwhelming introduction out of the way.

“Granddad, are you up for meeting my boyfriend?” It’s become much easier to say, and Steve’s pretty optimistic about this introduction.

“Sure, sure, where is he?” Grant responses, squinting at the surrounding people. Bucky blanches beside him.

“This is Bucky, Granddad,” Steve says, pulling Bucky forward again.

“Bucky?” Grant squints up at his face.

“Hello sir. Mr. Vice President,” Bucky stammers. He holds out his hand and Grant uses it to yank Bucky closer to him with much more strength than Bucky had clearly expected.

“You’re a boy?” he asks.

“Oh, lord,” Steve hears Sarah say behind him.

“Yes, Granddad, boyfriend. His name is Bucky,” Steve supplies.

“Pretty boy,” Grant remarks and then lets go. It’s one of the funniest moments of Steve’s life, and his mother is completely humiliated. Bucky flushes and tells Steve that it’s probably time for that beer.

It’s the most relaxing weekend that Steve’s had in a long time. And even though Bucky clearly sticks out from the family like a sore thumb, he tells Steve that he enjoyed himself.

Bucky might be a Rogers someday, Steve thinks with a thrill. He reaches for Bucky’s hand as they drive back to DC and plays unconsciously with his ring finger.

It’s too early to think about it, but Steve puts it on the backburner where it offers a nice contrast to all the fears and frustrations about Bucky he’s also storing in the back of his mind.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve is re-elected to the House for a second, two-year term. It’s a huge victory that he can get elected as an openly gay man with some scandal in his past, but he’s worked damn hard for his District and his Country, and even his opponent had acknowledged this during the campaign.

He sits on multiple committees, and he’s one of the go-to congressmen when the minority leader needs something done for the party.

His career is taking off, he has the respect of his constituents, and most people barely even talk about that time Steve was getting a divorce and putting his boyfriend through rehab while being kicked out of the family home. Most people.

When he’s walking to work on Monday morning, a woman in a fanny pack stops him to tell him that he’s going to hell for being gay.

“Oh, that’s not good,” he says to her as he continues on his way to the Capitol.

“Cheater,” another woman hisses at him when he’s walking up the steps.

“Sorry to have offended,” he offers almost glibly.

So some people will always have a problem with him, but for the most part, he’s got high approval and it makes his job that much more rewarding.

“How do I look?” asks the other rewarding part of his life as Bucky spins in front of Steve in a black suit with tiny, almost imperceptible white stripes.

“I’ve always loved you in a suit,” Steve says with want tinging his voice, knowing that they can’t do more than flirt right now, because they’re going to be late as is.

“I’ve always loved me in an Armani suit,” Bucky corrects, tugging at his hair in the mirror as if the gel isn’t already boosting it high enough.

“I’m sure you had dozens growing up,” Steve teases him. Bucky’s eyes go hard in the mirror, and Steve realizes how nasty it sounded.

“Sorry, baby. That was a dick thing to say; I didn’t mean it.” Steve’s bowtie is giving him pains, but he can’t ask Bucky to do it after he’s just insulted the guy.

“I didn’t have any suits growing up,” Bucky says, still looking in the mirror and trapped in what he sees there. Steve smoothes a hand up his well-bedecked back and shoulders and leans forward to kiss his ear.

“That reminds me; have you heard from your dad?” he asks to change the subject, probably not as much as it should be changed.

“He said he doesn’t know about Christmas.”

“Do you think that means ‘no,’ or he really doesn’t know which one of the three places he goes he’s going to be that night?”

“Wow. Two for two,” Bucky says softly.

“Okay, that one I’ve heard you say before,” Steve tries to defend himself. Bucky doesn’t look appeased.

“I’ll make it up to you. Promise. You can talk shit about any of my family members, as much as you want, during this wedding.” Steve wiggles his eyebrows and Bucky cracks a smile.

“That does sound like something I’d like. And you won’t get mad?”

“I won’t get mad. Now if you’re done preening, can we go?”

They walk into the church where Steve’s sister is getting married, and Sarah waves at them from the second row, bride’s side.

“Your mom looks like a whore,” Bucky whispers in his ear. Steve’s jaw drops open and Bucky grins. “Can’t get mad!” He’s just teasing and Sarah Rogers certainly does not look remotely whorish, so Steve just tweaks his ear in retaliation.

They take their seats with the bulk of Steve’s nuclear family. His parents and his mom’s parents are there, along with Steve’s brothers Don and Clint. They make small talk about Don’s medical practice and Clint’s latest Army tour until the church rises and Steve’s sister, Janet, walks down the aisle. She looks radiant in a dress that she designed herself, and Bucky doesn’t have anything to say about her or the service itself.

While the family takes pictures before the reception, Bucky stands around with the sisters-in-law, Jane and Bobbi, and stocks up on plenty of ammo for later snarky comments.

Everything is very light-hearted and photogenic, as weddings should be, until the reception when Steve and Bucky find themselves seated directly across from Steve’s father.

“A little birdy told me that you want to go against the party on the higher education bill, Steven,” Joe uses as a conversation opener.

“Daddy, no politics tonight!” Janet snaps from the seat of honor. Joe beams at her and drinks his brandy until she leaves to work the receiving line. Sarah goes with her, and then there’s no one to be the de facto Manners Police.

“The House and the Senate are different, boy. It’s all about the party line in the House, and I hear that you want to play the renegade.”

“I don’t think you’re really in a position to lecture me, dad. Approval ratings down another ten percent, environmentalists breathing down your throat.” Joe shrugs.

“In fifty years, whatever our factories did to the atmosphere won’t have been a drop in the bucket. They’re creating jobs and bringing people to the area.”

“To areas that can’t support an influx of people, dad. You’ve had had to open thirteen new high schools this year alone, and they’re all failing because they were thrown together without proper resources or development.”

“Jobs are all people care about.”

“People in New York care about themselves; when you have people moving into the area and taking the jobs before New Yorkers can get them, and throwing up shoddy new schools and developments, you’re not making any new jobs for residents and you’re creating lower-income areas which are then used to justify a lower wage. And you’re fucking up the environment because you’re placing basically zero restrictions on whatever factories you can get to relocate here. It’s a fucking mess, dad.”

Joe sees Bucky watching the conversation and narrows his eyes.

“Well, let’s hear the boy’s opinion. James, what do you think about my gubernatorial legacy?”

Bucky blinks as Steve blusters at his father to leave Bucky out of this.

“I think…you were elected to protect the interests of your state, and you haven’t been doing that as much lately.”

“That right, boy?”

“Dad!” Steve exclaims, loudly enough that some of the nearby tables look over.

“I grew up in Brooklyn and went to SUNY, you know. You’ve been the Governor most of my life. I wrote a paper on you once,” Bucky continues. Steve wishes he would just ignore Joe. “And you used to be all about New Yorkers, but lately, it’s hard to see what you’re all about.”

“I approved gay marriage, and this is the thanks I get,” Joe complains. It frustrates the hell out of Steve when he says that.

“Dad, you need to back-” Steve starts, semi-rising out of his chair as he gets himself worked up. Sarah appears out of nowhere and forces him back into his chair with a manicured hand.

“What the hell is going on?” she whispers through clenched teeth, a pleasant look still fixed on her face. “If you two get into one of your Arguments at Jan’s wedding, I’ll never speak to you both again.”

Sarah Rogers isn’t one to make idle threats, so everyone sort of simmers down after that.

Steve thinks about the ‘Arguments’ he’s been having with his father lately, both over the phone and in person, and reflects on the fact that he’d never dreamed of coming at Joe’s governance even two years ago. He doesn’t know if it’s his own position or his father’s declining ethical code which has spurred the change.

When Joe gets up to talk to some people, Bucky leans over to Steve and whispers, “Your dad is a fucking dick.”

“No dissent here,” Steve responds.

Something’s brewing in his family, all happiness over Janet’s nuptials aside, and he gets the impression that he’s going to learn some things about himself as it unfolds.

Before he can solve the Rogers issue, however, he’s slammed with a curveball that takes away all of his ability to focus on anything that isn’t Bucky Barnes.

It happens like this: two weeks after Steve’s election, one week after the wedding, Steve comes home to their house. It’s a very nice house, if small, and they haven’t lived in it for more than a few months.

There is a note on the door in Bucky’s handwriting. It’s written on part of an envelope which probably held junk mail at some point, and it’s taped to the door at an angle. Steve takes the note with just his name written on the front, and he flips it over.

‘Please take a moment to reflect on how much you love me,’ the note reads. Steve, baffled, crumbles it in his hands and walks into the house, panic already building. He’s not following the note’s directions precisely; he knows that he loves and needs Bucky like he loves and needs oxygen, but he can’t spare a moment when the note heralds something bad inside.

He finds it in the form of Bucky sitting in the corner of their bedroom, very evidently high. His nose is runny, and his pupils are dilated, and he absolutely refuses to look Steve in the eyes.

Tough shit; Steve kneels in front of him and grabs his chin to force Bucky to look at him.

“Why, Bucky?” he pleads. He’s feeling a lot of anger underneath the surface of his skin, but the only tone he can muster is begging. “Why now. You were doing so well. Why now, Bucky?”

Bucky shrugs and Steve has to let go, because otherwise, he’s going to shake him or possibly hit him. He struggles to get himself under control.

“How much did you do?” he starts with a few minutes later when he can trust himself to have this conversation.

“Didn’t even do the whole gram.”

“Where did you get it?” Steve asks. Amazingly, he doesn’t sound like he wants to tear the room apart and everything in it.

“One of those kids, guys who worked on your campaign. The university students.” Steve flicks through faces in his mind and comes up with three or four possibilities.

“Why. That was weeks ago; why did you buy it from him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” Bucky shakes his head. “You have no idea why you bought a gram of cocaine after two years in recovery.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Fuck, Bucky, make me understand this. How long have you had it?”

“Few weeks.”

“A few weeks.” Steve pulls on his hair. “So a few weeks ago, you accidentally handed over cash and got a gram of coke in response. You then hid it-where’d you hide it?”

“Sock drawer. In the socks with the red on them. You don’t like them,” he mumbles. Steve goes to the sock drawer and yanks it clean out of the dresser.

“So you hid the coke in a pair of socks for a few weeks, still unclear why you bought it, thinking that, what? You just wouldn’t use it? You wouldn’t think about it?” Steve is tearing through each pair of socks now, yanking it free from its mate and shoving his fingers into the sock to check for mystery items. “And then today, you decide you do want it, and luckily, you had it on hand. Jesus, I always knew you were dumb.” He finds his own surprise in the sock drawer, a simple ring box in a pair of heavy black and grey socks he knows Bucky won’t wear. He angrily flings the box under the bed before Bucky can get a look at it.

“I’m pretty sure the book says you’re not supposed to insult me,” Bucky says, finally showing a bit of backbone.

“Fuck the book!” Steve echoes Bucky’s sentiments from two years ago. “The book guaranteed that this wouldn’t happen. If we followed the steps, this wouldn’t happen!”

Except of course the book couldn’t and didn’t guarantee sobriety. Those kind of promises were impossible when human nature, when Bucky’s nature, was concerned.

“Do you have any more? Where is it?” he asks when all of the socks are mate-less and inside-out.

“Bathroom,” Bucky tells him. Steve eyes their master bathroom, much bigger than their last, warily. He pushes the door aside and enters to see a small baggie still 1/3 full of white powder. There are some grains on the marble of the sink, and Steve can see faint slices in the shiny surface where his junkie boyfriend has run a razor blade to usher the poison into little rows.

He skims his fingers across the counter’s surface and feels some of the grains cling to his fingers. Morbidly fascinated, he empties the rest of the bag into his palm and holds it up to inspect. It’s so innocuous-looking, like the Splenda he puts in his coffee. What is it about this that ruins people? What is it about this that Bucky can’t kick, apparently, even after two years of turning his back on it?

He holds it closer to his face to see if it has a smell, and Bucky misinterprets the gesture. He pushes off the doorway where he’d been leaning and flails into Steve’s space, knocking his hand aside and shouting wordlessly.

Of course, Steve wasn’t going to ingest it. The thought didn’t cross his mind, but Bucky thinks that it did, and Bucky is suddenly sobbing and wrestling Steve’s hand toward the faucet and screaming frantically.

“No, Steve, seriously no, you can’t ever do that, you don’t want that hunger, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t…” He collapses, sobbing, into Steve’s side, and as angry as he is, Steve turns and pulls Bucky closer, holding him tightly against his body.

“Shhhh,” he breathes as Bucky chokes on the mess of crying and yelling and breathing he’s doing. He looks down to see a trail of Bucky’s snot on his Brooks Brothers suit. It’s a concrete detail that starts the planning gears in motion in his head.

“Bucky, Bucky. Okay, we need to get you cleaned up. I’m going to clean this, get rid of any residue, and you’re going to tell me if anything else is stashed in the house.”

“No, there’s nothing, Steve, I promise, I swear,” Bucky hiccups.

“Okay. You shower and put some clean clothes on. And then water, you’re going to drink lots of water.” Bucky nods like the faster he moves his head, the more sincere he’ll prove himself to Steve. He immediately starts to strip down and climb into the shower.

Steve really enjoys that shower, and he really enjoys climbing into the shower with Bucky under normal circumstances, but he couldn’t get hard now even with one of Bucky’s birthday stripteases.

He wipes down the counter and sprays the shit out of it with bathroom cleaner. He’s pretty sure that if Bucky tries to snort anything off of it again, he’ll knock himself out with the force of the chemicals.

After making sure that there’s nothing illegal on his bathroom floor, he goes back into the bedroom and doesn’t feel like dealing with the socks, so he goes downstairs and methodically makes a stir-fry just the way Bucky’s shown him, aware that he’s purposefully chosen a meal that requires some degree of investment so that he can forget about what Bucky did for a few seconds at a time.

Bucky takes a long time upstairs, and Steve suspects that he’s cleaning up the sock disaster. He lays plates for both of them and fills up a tumbler with water, placing it next to Bucky’s plate. He goes through every bottle of vitamins and natural supplements they own, and comes up with a handful, which he dumps next to the water. Then he sits and stares at the wood grain on the table until Bucky comes downstairs.

It’s unclear whether he was seeking comfort or he’s trying to make a statement, because he’s in Steve’s sweatpants and Steve’s hoodie and even Steve’s preferred socks, which Bucky hates because they only go to the ankle.

Steve picks up his fork as soon as he sees Bucky and starts to eat, the food gone slightly cold.

“You’re going to drink a gallon of water tonight,” he tells him. “That’s the first eighth.” Bucky nods pliantly and begins to eat and drink.

After dinner, Bucky moves to clean up the dishes. Steve lets him and watches him like a hawk for any signs of weird behaviors.

“Are you still high?” he asks when Bucky seems more or less normal. Maybe slightly more restless.

“No. It really doesn’t last that long,” Bucky tells him. Steve huffs a dark laugh at the stupidity of risking so much for such a short period of pleasure.

“Do you feel okay now?”

“I have a lot of energy, but I’m kind of tired.”

“That doesn’t make sense Bucky.”

“Well, it’s how I feel.” Steve goes into the study to get the book from the bottom shelf. He turns to the second-to-last chapter, the chapter he’s only skimmed until now, and starts to read, sitting on the love seat that his parents had given them for Christmas.

Bucky wanders in with another glass of water, and makes a show of guzzling it while sitting at Steve’s feet.

“Did you wash your nose out in the shower?” Steve asks him as he reads the chapter, “If your loved one temporarily falls off the wagon.” The whole chapters stresses the ‘temporariness’ of Bucky’s mistake, but to Steve, it feels pretty damn permanent right now.

“Yeah.” He reads about water and vitamins, things he’s remembered from Bucky’s withdrawal, and sleep and hot food and love. He thinks he’s providing enough of all these things.

After discussing the immediate aftermath of falling off the wagon (Steve hates the metaphor), the book discusses the decisions that he needs to make with his loved one to get him back on track.

“I think you should go back to rehab.”

“I don’t need to go to rehab.”

“Bucky, I am _not_ qualified to help you with this.”

“You did last time.” Bucky sounds sullen.

“I helped you through the detox, Bucky. I’m not a counselor, and I can’t do whatever they did in rehab to put your head back on straight.”

“It was just a bunch of talking and meditating and learning about all the shitty things that blow does to your body and to the people around you.” Steve wants to say something nasty about the ‘people around you’ part, but he’s running low on anger in the face of overwhelming fear. If he can’t convince Bucky to go to rehab, Steve is afraid for him.

“Bucky, please. Go for me.” Bucky looks up at him with wide eyes, and there’s still something off about his pupils swimming in the midst of blue.

“I- okay. Okay, if that’s what it will take for you to forgive me.” He nuzzles at Steve’s knee, and Steve isn’t furious anymore, but he’s not ready for that degree of softness either.

“I’m going to work from home tomorrow morning, and I’ll make some calls. You need to go to bed and start sleeping this off.”

“I haven’t finished my water.”

“Finish that glass and then go to sleep.” Bucky nods and stands up hesitantly.

“Can I have a kiss before bed?” Steve sighs and motions Bucky to bend down to him. Bucky brings their lips together, and it’s so familiar that Steve’s body starts to react, and he gets the urge to pull Bucky into his lap. He ignores it, licks across the seam of Bucky’s lips, and then pulls back.

“Goodnight,” he says, pushing Bucky’s chest away with two fingers.

Steve stays up late doing research about private rehab clinics and regaining sobriety after fucking up. He finds that it’s not uncommon for addicts to suddenly and without reason go back to their poison, and the help they get in the immediate aftermath seems to go a long way to determining whether it’s a brief episode or another down-spiral.

This is a brief episode. It can’t be anything else. Steve reads and learns until his eyes can’t track the words on his tablet screen, and then he falls asleep on the couch in the living room.

The next morning, he wakes up to Bucky puttering in the kitchen and looking overly chipper.

“Good morning,” Bucky tosses over his shoulder as he flips an omelet.

Steve sits up and groans, twisting his back that’s all out of whack from sleeping on the sofa.

“Morning,” he says as he pops his spine. He gets up and walks into the kitchen area, which is separated from the living room only by a change in flooring, and hugs Bucky from behind as he messes with the skillet.

“How do you feel this morning,” he breathes into Bucky’s hair. It smells spicy like the citrus shampoo Bucky loves.

“I feel okay. Made it through the comedown, and now it’s just the craving.”

“Is it worse than before? Now that you, you know…”

“Fell off the wagon?”

“Fuck that saying. You have not and never will have anything to do with wagons,” Steve says passionately. Bucky laughs, and it feels alright between them again.

“It is worse. I guess. It always fluctuates, how much I want it, and right now it’s just really bad.” Bucky turns around in his arms and kisses Steve on the chin. “But that will change, right?” Steve nods, even though he doesn’t know, and leans down to kiss Bucky properly.

The omelets are a little burned by the time they separate, but they eat them at the table while Steve shows Bucky the research he’s printed out. Bucky listens to his pitch until the end, then drops a bomb on Steve.

“I don’t want to go to rehab.”

“Dammit Bucky, we decided this last night.”

“I don’t need it, Steve. The cravings are going to be bad, but I’ve handled them before, and there’s not enough in my system to need a true detox. And I know what the consequences could have been of relapsing – I sat there for hours yesterday, thinking about your face when you got home and all of the hurt that I was going to cause you, and I wanted to take it back so badly, even when I was still in the high.” Steve opens his mouth and then closes it.

“So what do you want to do?”

“I’ll go to NA,” Bucky offers. Steve raises an eyebrow, because Bucky’s been staunchly against attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings for years. The senior Barnes probably has a lot to do with Bucky’s irrational hatred of NA.

“How often?”

“Every week, for as long as you want. I promise, Steve,” Bucky says wheedlingly. Steve runs a hand over his face, trying to mentally jump from one plan to another.

“I’m going to shower. You find out where and when they meet, and what the requirements to get in are, and I’ll talk to you about it when I get back down.” Bucky eagerly grabs his laptop, and Steve briefly grips the back of his neck before heading for the stairs.

“Oh, before I forget, the name of the guy who sold to you?” The smile drops of Bucky’s face.

“Don’t fuck him over, Steve. He’s young, he’s a really good guy-”

“What’s his name, Bucky?” Steve says calmly. Bucky gapes at him for a minute and then turns back to the computer with a tight look on his face.

“I’m guessing this is like the security guard.”

“Name, or we go back to the rehab plan.”

After working his jaw back and forth for a minute, Bucky mumbles, “Isaiah Horton.”

Steve makes a detour on his way to work that afternoon. He buys a cheap, disposable cell phone from a newspaper vendor, and loads it up with two hundred minutes just so that the guy doesn’t look at him askance.

He gets in the door of his office, and it’s chaos.

“Shitty day to take the morning off!” Darcy yells at at him as she thrusts a thick packet of papers into his hand. “The higher education bill got moved to this afternoon, and there’s been about a dozen people from party leadership here wanting to talk to you!”

“Then it’s good I was legitimately out,” he says, putting down his messenger back and flipping through the packet.

“Why was this moved up?”

“Not the point; the point is, we haven’t decided yet if you’re going to vote this down.” Actually, Steve has decided, but he’d counted on a few more days to talk to his colleagues and see whom he could persuade to jump ship with him.

“Steve, the minority leader wants to see you in his office,” Will tells him, covering the mouthpiece of a phone with his hand. Steve thinks about the burner phone in his own bag, and how he won’t have a minute to himself for hours now.

“Okay, tell him I’m on my way.”

Here’s the thing about this bill: It’s going to fuck over college students. It’s supposed to provide them with easier access to loans and lower interest rates, which is definitely something Steve supports, but it caps the total loan amount way too low. If a student goes to school in-state, or they they have outside funding to pay for room and board, then it works for them, but there’s a huge percentage of college-bound students who are going to use this loan program and run out of money their senior year.

It needs work. Steve’s party thinks it doesn’t. And there’s a lot of truth to the saying that, in the House, you vote as your party votes. With a few exceptions. This is going to be the most scrutinized exception of Steve’s career thus far, because it’s the minority leader’s bill in the first place.

He’s admitted to Sitwell’s office, and he smiles through all of the uneasy looks people give him. One of the unexpected silver linings of his career is that he’s not as fatalistic as most young politicians. Many 27-year-old Representatives would be terrified to be summoned like this, but Steve’s made it through a cheating scandal, a gay scandal, and a drug scandal, all before taking office. He has a resiliency born of ignoring the shit people talk and doing his job for his entire tenure in Congress.

“Steve,” the minority leader greets him. They shake hands, and Steve sits in front of his desk.

“How can I be of assistance,” he asks placidly. A worry about what Bucky is doing right now brushes against the back of his mind, but he ignores it; he needs to be in the here and now.

“Steve, I wanted to hear from your own goddamn mouth that you’re voting this down,” Sitwell tells him, not mincing any words.

“Yes, sir. I don’t mean any disrespect to you or to the people who have worked on this bill. But I have a lot of objections, and I can’t vote for it in good conscious.”

“Tell me your objections, son,” he’s commanded. So he does. The leader doesn’t interrupt him, probably wanting Steve to feel like a child reciting a speech for an adult, but Steve’s basically given this monologue to Bucky at least three times without any audience feedback; he doesn’t squirm.

“You aren’t wrong, Steve,” Sitwell says with feigned kindness. “But the fucking Republicans are going to kill this bill if we make any more changes to it, and we need to push it through. We can go back and adjust it later when the program is successful, you know this,” he says patronizingly.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Steve says with Boy Scout earnestness. He’s playing it up a little, but the fact is, he’s not changing his mind on this. “On this matter, I agree with them. It’s not a bill that’s going to help more than a specific bracket of college students, and it’s going to fuck some of them over when they have to drop out or find a loan with exorbitant interest anyway their senior year.” He stands up. “Now I won’t take any more of your time, because my mind is made up. I’m sure you can use these hours before the vote more productively.”

Sitwell stands up also and scrutinizes him.

“You’re an asshole, Rogers,” he says calmly. Steve has to smile at that.

“Well, you knew my granddad,” he says with a slight twinge when he thinks about Grant Rogers.

“Son, I don’t think this is the place for you,” the leader says, softening slightly at the mention of Steve’s late grandfather.

“Really? I think it suits me well.”

“I’ve seen your dedication and your principles,” Sitwell continues. “Right now, they’re a pain in my rectum. But you’re only one of 435; you can’t really do shit, can you?” He waves Steve out of his office.

“There’s a Senate seat for New York coming up, isn’t there?” he says when Steve has a hand on the door. Steve turns and grins at him.

“I heard something about that.”

Many hours and a grueling vote later, Steve sends home all of his staffers and prepares to go home himself. He first accesses the information from his recent campaign and looks up Isaiah Horton. He taps the number out on his disposable phone.

“Mr. Horton?” he says when the ringing stops and someone picks up.

“Yeah?” the voice on the other end says.

“My name is Steve. You recently sold my boyfriend a gram of cocaine.” The voice thinks with some difficulty and then sputters, recognition evident.

“Sir, Mr., I didn’t know-”

“Yes you did,” Steve cuts him off from whatever he claims he didn’t know. “I have something I want to say to you.” He takes a deep breath and tries to channel his father. “If I ever see you again, I’m going to call the police to search you. And,” he continues. “If you go near my boyfriend again, I’ll pull some strings and you’ll never work in the District of Columbia.”

“Yes, sir,” whimpers the voice. It’s good that he’s buying this and not asking for specifics, because Steve’s not sure that the aforementioned strings really exist.

“And take a look at your life,” Steve growls before hanging up and throwing away the phone.

He collects his overcoat and messenger bag, and leaves his office, heart thrumming. As he walks down the Capitol steps, a figure uncrouches from a bench and approaches him. For a wild moment, he thinks it’s Isaiah.

“Hey,” Bucky says as he walks under a streetlight. He doesn’t look the worse for his episode yesterday, and the light highlights his features by throwing up shadows around the bones in his face.

Steve reaches for him and takes his hand.

“I worried about you all day today,” he says, kissing Bucky’s palm. “This is a nice surprise. Were you waiting long?”

“Yes,” Bucky says with a grin. “I take it you were doing important things?” Steve tucks Bucky under his arm and walks in the direction of the Metro.

“Lots of drama today. That higher education bill, and I got reamed out by the Minority Leader.”

“Did it pass?”

“No,” Steve says lightly. “We are the minority party, after all.”

“Then couldn’t you have just voted for it and known it was going to fail?”

“I could have, but then I’d always have that on my voting record. And I wouldn’t have felt right,” Steve tells him. “Something good came of it, though.”  
“What?”

“I think I got told to run for the Senate seat in four years.”

“By who?”

“By the minority leader.” Bucky cracks up.

“Even when you get reamed out, Steve, they want to promote you.” Steve turns them and starts to fumble for his wallet and his Metro card.

“Does this mean we’re running a Senate campaign for your 30th birthday?” Steve separates from Bucky so that they can go down the escalator, but Bucky curls against his back as they glide downwards.

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully. “There’s still the other thing.”

“Ah, the other thing,” Bucky says, and Steve can feel his lips move against the back of Steve’s neck.

“I need you on board for the other thing, though, Bucky. Are you with me?” His stumble yesterday has Steve second-guessing.

“Till the end of the line,” Bucky tells him as they insert their SmarTrip cards into the machine and walk through the turnstile.

“So Shady Grove?” Steve jokes, referring to the Red Line’s last stop.

“Yep. I love you all the way to Shady Grove.”


	6. Chapter 6

Four years later, at the age of thirty-one, Steve is elected to his fourth term in the House of Representatives. Bruce Banner is elected as the new Senator from New York, despite the fact that Steve is more well-known, has served bigger roles on more committees, and finally meets the age requirement for the Senate.

“There's a lot of buzz about why you didn’t run,” his campaign manager tells him, tossing her red hair over one shoulder.

“I am quite aware of that,” he responds. His phone dings and he picks it up to see a text from Bucky. ‘My boss is literally insane,’ it reads, ‘Had to push back dinner reservations until 9.’ So Steve has an unexpected late night at the office.

“You’re going to be asked about it soon,” Natasha tells him seriously, which seems to be her natural tone.

“My mother asks me about it every time I see her.”

“And what do you tell her?”

“That I’m very happy with my committee work, and I want to serve in the House now that we’re the majority party again.” She wrinkles her forehead.

“That’ll work for now, but you don’t want to sound too fat and happy staying where you are. You’ll lose the voters who admire your work ethic.”

Steve’s phone dings again. ‘This workplace has gone 0 days without any of the machinery catching on fire’ it reads, followed by a frowny emoticon.

‘Sounds like a great story for dinner. Too bad I’ll be asleep in my soup,’ he texts back.

‘I’ll play footsie with you and give you a little wake-up call,’ and ‘I’m really sorry about this,’ come in a minute later.

‘No worries. LY,’ he responds. He must smile, because Natasha clears her throat.

“If you’re too busy to talk about the campaign,” she admonishes.

“I’m not too busy, but I need a snack now.”

“I thought you and James were having a rare date night.”

“We are, but it got pushed back three hours.” Steve pushes himself out from behind his desk and wanders to the mini-fridge in the corner of the office. Whichever cousin in interning for him at the moment usually keeps it stocked with Greek yogurt and fruit.

“So let’s finalize our timeline and decide when we want to announce this.” Steve chooses blueberry yogurt and rummages around the counter for a spoon.

“Okay, so this is what I’m thinking.”

Five hours later, Steve gets to their table before Bucky does and orders a sinfully expensive bottle of wine, deciding that Bucky will be paying tonight. It’s only a few minutes before Bucky jogs into the restaurant, looks around, and sees Steve sipping Schloss Vollrads Riesling and grinning at him.

“Again, the sorriest,” Bucky says as he bends down to kiss Steve. He takes his jacket off and tosses it haphazardly over the back of his chair before sitting down and grinning at Steve.

“How did things with Natasha go?”

“First, I want to hear the fire story,” Steve says as a server comes over to bring them a basket of little bread disks. Bucky asks for coffee with dinner, which says a lot about how work went.

They talk about their respective days, which are still interesting even though they’ve been together for more than a decade now. ‘Damn, more than a decade,’ Steve thinks as Bucky tells the story of the fire with over exaggerated hand gestures. Sometimes he has trouble believing that he’s not still married to Sharon and smiling gamely as he plays the straight man. Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible that he can have Bucky and politics too.

Bucky is in the middle of telling him how he’d used his NA keychain to unstick the lock on the fire extinguisher when the wine and the atmosphere and Bucky’s enthusiasm catch up to him, and he puts a hand on Bucky’s to stop the tirade of words pouring out of his mouth.

“We should get married,” he tells him, simply and without fanfare. He doesn’t even have the ring with him tonight. Bucky blinks.

“Does Natasha want us to get married?” Yes, actually, but that’s irrelevant.

“I want us to get married. If you want to.”

“Um, sure,” Bucky blushes and laughs. “I thought we were tabling that for a calmer time down the road, though.”

“When have our lives ever been calm, Bucky?” Steve asks. “And I’m going to need a little more than ‘um, sure.’”

“Sorry, I’m just so underwhelmed by the romance of your proposal,” Bucky says, but he’s grinning ear-to-ear in a way that he only does when he’s utterly and completely happy. It’s usually reserved for when the Yankees win the World Series.

“I’ll get down on one knee when I give you the ring,” Steve says, and Bucky rests his chin in his hand and bites his lip, still grinning. He looks as boyish as he did at 18, and even more handsome. “I’m just looking for a statement of commitment right now.”

“A formal, official, statement of commitment.”

“Nonrefundable,” Steve adds.

“I guess I’d like to change my ‘um, sure’ to a “yes, definitely,” Bucky says. Steve squeezes his wrist again and their food arrives. They both grin like loons into their steaks and catch each other’s eyes across the table every few seconds.

“Bucky and I are getting married,” he tells his parents the next time he’s in New York. He has to actually spend some time in the district and the state to be allowed to represent them, and it’s good for him to talk to his constituents and check in on the local governments every now and then.

This is the first time, however, that he’s been in his home state and someone’s come up to him and said “your father’s a criminal.” Steve figures he’ll lead with the happy engagement news and then get around to the what fuck is going on with Joe.

Sarah smiles at him and gets up to give him a hug, and Joe nods at him.

“Let’s hope this goes better than the last one,” he jokes. Steve rolls his eyes at his father’s humor, even though it isn’t mean-spirited. When Joe is mean-spirited, everyone in the immediate vicinity knows it.

“Did you pick a date yet?” his mother asks.

“Is it going to be like a regular wedding?” is his father’s contribution.

“We want to do it soon, probably this summer,” Steve tells her. “And what the hell does that mean, a regular wedding?”

“ _This_ summer?” Sarah says hysterically. She rushes to get her calendar.

“I’ve just never been to a gay wedding,” Joe tells Steve.

“Well, all the guests are required to wear spandex and glitter,” Steve fires back. “And the cake looks like a giant penis.”

“Your mother will wash your mouth out with soap if she heard that,” Joe counters. Sarah rushes back into the room, seemingly oblivious to both the ‘hell’ and ‘penis’ that Steve has just tossed out.

“I just don’t think this summer will work, sweetheart,” Sarah frets.

“We’ll make it work. It doesn’t have to be anything big. As dad has helpfully pointed out, I already had a wedding, and we invited the whole damn family to that.” He’s testing his luck with this cursing thing, and she hears it that time.

“Watch you language, Steven. I’ll call James tomorrow,” she says as she scribbles something down. “You weren’t any help the last time either.”

“I don’t really think you’re going to get him to go to any bridal expos with you,” Steve tells her. “Cake tastings, maybe.”

“Men planning a wedding,” Sarah mumbles. The whole thing clearly unbalances her.

“So he’s going to be an official part of the family now, huh.” Joe still doesn’t sound mean, but he hasn’t even gotten out of his chair to congratulate Steve. “Is he going to take your last name?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t really care,” Steve says as he spoons some of the fancy Jell-O dessert into his mouth.

“Can we trust him?” Steve’s spoon falls to his plate with a clatter and he glares at his dad.

“Are you fucking serious?” Sarah smacks his bicep and leaves the room. She hates when they fight, but it seems to happen every time they get together. Usually it’s about politics and not Steve’s personal life, however.

“I am serious. Can we trust a drug addict in the family? We’re not the damn Kardashians.”

“We’re also not the Kennedys, dad. We don’t have dozens of family secrets just waiting for the brother-in-law to spill. He probably was our biggest secret!”

“They can always relapse,” Joe argues, putting a heavy emphasis on ‘they.’

“You think I don’t fucking know that? You think we’re not actively trying to prevent that from happening? Bucky’s in NA; he has a sponsor. It’s not a fucking issue, dad, and if it becomes one, then we’ll deal with it like we’ve dealt with it before!” He grips the armrests of his chair, steaming.

“Son, I’m not going to run for president.” Steve is confused for a minute, and then he laughs.

“Of course you’re not. You were never going to run for president; you never had the clout to run for president, and you certainly don’t now that you sold our state to the highest bidder.”

“I’m not going to run,” Joe repeats himself, looking livid. “But I’d still like to see one of my sons in the White House. Now, I wish to God that your granddad had put that on one of your brothers. I really do, not because you’re not a good politician, but I wish he hadn’t picked the gay one. It’s going to make it near impossible for you to even win the Primary.” Steve’s knuckles turn white. “But he did pick you, and you are gay, we can’t change that. What we can do is make sure that you’re set up with the right…life partner for when you do run.”

“I’m not even old enough to be president,” Steve says hysterically. “The youngest president, Teddy Roosevelt, was 42, and he didn’t even get elected!”

“If you actually believed that preparation doesn’t get you anywhere in life, then you’d be working as a clerk in Senator Coulson’s office instead of holding your own seat,” Joe tells him. “You need to get ready now. And even though James is a nice boy, when he’s not snorting up your tax-funded income, he’s not ever going to be the First Husband."

“Dad, he has his own income,” Steve starts with the least insane of his father’s barbs, pointing violently at him.

“He’s never around to help you. He didn’t work on your campaign. He doesn’t host parties like your mother does. He doesn’t do charity work.”

“Again, he has a job!” Steve explodes. The finger-jabbing thing is working for him, so he keeps doing it. “He did work on my campaign, and he goes with me when I need a date to functions. He does the food bank with me! Everything you’re accusing him of is wrong or inane.”

“Sharon always-” And that’s Steve’s breaking point. He gets up and walks through the house to get his coat.

“Steven, listen to me,” Joe cajoles, following him. “I’m not trying to get you worked up. I just think that James has done all he can do for you. I mean, you didn’t even _try_ for the Senate seat.”

“I bet you think that’s his fault, too. You know dad, you are so quick to criticize people,” Steve says as he loops his scarf around his neck, “but you are failing as a governor and as a decent man right now. Someone came up to me when I was getting gas and said, straight-up, ‘your father is a criminal.’ And I couldn’t even defend you.” He puts his overcoat on and sees his mother standing at the top of the steps, gaping down at him.

“You don’t give a shit about the people you want to vote for you; you just care about the money that’s coming into the state because you let big business interests dominate the economy here. And you can’t even admit that it didn’t work out the way you wanted it to; you’re standing by your shitty, terrible plan, and there are no extra jobs, strapped communities, and absolutely not a budge in consumerism!”

“Steven, don’t talk to your father that way,” Sarah says as she jogs down the stairs with her arms out for balance.

“I’m talking to my governor that way, and I’m asking him why it’s so shitty.” Joe glares at Steve, a muscle twitching in his forehead, and Steve knows that he crossed a line at some point. There’s a lot more yelling and storming out in this argument than in any they’ve had thus far.

“I need to leave. Thank you for lunch, mom,” he says, kissing her cheek and opening the heavy front door.

“Steven!” his father yells after him as he walks to his car. “Don’t try to confuse the issue here. I don’t give my blessing to you and Barnes. You’ll agree with me if you just think about it rationally!”

Steve fumes as he drives home from Albany, and he knows he won’t be any good when he gets back to his office. He sees a sign for New York City ahead, and on a whim, he jerks the car across multiple lanes of traffic and takes the exit. His heart pounds with adrenaline, but a grin is threatening his face as he dials his phone with one hand, keeping an eye on the road.

“I won’t be back in the office this afternoon or evening. Move my meetings to tomorrow. I’ll be in at 11.”

“Are you goin’ on a little booty call, sir?” Darcy asks him. She’s the only staffer who would ever speak to him as such, having worked for him for six years and shared a bathtub with him when they were younger and covered in chicken pox.

“Maybe. Seems a shame to come all the way to New York and not at least check in on my city boy.” He shifts lanes again to get around a slow-moving Buick. “Also if I come back to the office, I’m just going to rant about my father all night.”

“I take it Uncle Joe didn’t respond well to the news of your engagement?”

“That’s an understatement. I’ll tell you tomorrow. Gotta go – I’m not supposed to be talking on the phone while driving.”

“You’re such a goody-goody,” Darcy tells him. “Have fun tonight. Unwind. Details tomorrow.”

“No details.”

“All the details.” Steve hangs up.

He gets to Manhattan and finds a ridiculously expensive parking garage. He’s not really afraid that someone’s going to mess with his car, it being your average Honda Accord and not something unnecessarily swanky like some of the Congressmen drive, but he does feel the need to take all of the files and government documents he’s brought along for his meetings this morning. Consequently, he’s quite weighed down with bags as he walks three blocks to the shiny Stark Industries building smack in the middle of the city.

His smile and House ID get him past the receptionists on the first floor, and he climbs into the elevator with several tech whizzes who seem barely out of high school. Stark is known for employing the best and brightest young minds, and ‘young’ seems to be the key word; Steve feels his age as he unconsciously loosens his tie and one of the girls in a hot pink blazer and shorts giggles at him.

He gets out on the 31st floor along with the whiz kid with a silver piercing right through his lower lip, and the kid eyes him warily as they basically walk side-by-side down the hallway. Steve thinks about slowing his pace and falling back, but it’s not his nature to let other people lead.

“You here for a meeting?” the kid asks him, eying the messenger bag, brief case, and tote bag full of manila folders and reports.

“Not an expected one,” Steve says truthfully. They get to the hallway display for the schematics and prototypes of the Neuron-Sensitive WS-Hydra Arm, the new, cutting-edge prosthetic arm that Stark Industries put on the market just last month. They already have contracts with military organizations all over the world.

Steve does slow down then to run his eyes over the enlarged drawings and pieces of beautiful, baffling electronics.

“Oh, you like the arm? My department’s the one that rolled that beauty out,” the kid says proudly. “It’s the most advanced prosthetic in the world, no competition. We’re already working on legs, but they’re actually not as complex as the arm. Don’t really know why we did the arm first; for shock value, I guess.”

“It’s incredible,” Steve says after a moment.

“Yeah, you don’t know the half of it. Do you know that the guy who designed it did it while working at, like, a fucking microwave repair shop?” Steve hums appreciatively, still looking at Bucky’s handwriting preserved for posterity behind glass. “And as soon as Stark saw it, he had to have him. That was like, less than two years ago, and the guy’s already head of the national division. He’s a fucking genius.” His tone is halfway between awed and jealous.

Steve claps a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “Don’t get discouraged. I hear he was nearly 30 when he invented it. You’ve got plenty of time. Are you heading for the robotics labs?”

“Yeah.”

“Send Barnes out. Tell him his Congressman needs to see him.” The kid raises an eyebrow at him but walks away without another word. Steve turns back to the beautiful coils of wire and metal and traces them through the glass with his fingertips, leaving smudges.

“This is unexpected,” Bucky says from behind him a few minutes later. Steve turns to grin at him, not taking his fingers off the glass. “You know you can come in the lab.”

“Your lab is terrifying,” Steve freely admits. “And I’ll never get tired of looking at this, even though I can’t understand it.” Bucky laughs and steps forward to peck Steve on the lips. His hair is pretty wild like he’s been running his fingers through it, and he’s dressed as casually as the kids had been with a lab coat thrown over top of his jeans. ‘Human Robotics/Prostheses Division’ is stitched on the breast pocket in purple thread.

“It’s really not that complex,” Bucky says, rubbing the back of his neck and flushing. Which is bullshit, but Bucky still isn’t used to having an accolade like this to his name. “I just-my dad told me everything he wanted in an arm, and I designed it. Stark let me do whatever I wanted as long as I could explain it to him at the end of the day.”

“He was impressed enough to put you in charge,” Steve reminds him gently. Bucky snorts.

“Yes, because Stark is known for his decision-making skills.”

“You’re a good leader,” Steve says with a smile. He’ll never stop arguing that Bucky is more than he gives himself credit for.

“That’s all you, Steve. You try living with you and not eating the leadership-O’s for breakfast.” Steve cracks up as Bucky checks his watch.

“I actually have a meeting in two minutes. I’m sorry I can’t get lunch with you today. This is why we call first, dumbass.”

“I came here on a whim after a high noon showdown at the Governor’s mansion.” Bucky smoothes the front of his suit sympathetically and tightens Steve’s tie.

“I can switch up some things and come home tonight? I’ll be done by five, so I can make it home by about 8:30. Maybe. Let me check the Amtrak schedule.”

“Why don’t I just spend the night here?” Steve asks. “Then I’ll get more time with you. I’ve missed you lately.” Bucky’s been staying in the City about four nights a week and commuting back and forth the rest of the time. Steve loves that this makes Bucky happy, and that Bucky’s so damn successful, but he also wishes they lived in the same state most days.

“Okay,” Bucky tells him, aiming for nonchalance but obviously excited. “You don’t have a key, do you?” He takes his keys out of his coat pocket and begins the puzzle of trying to slip one of them off the ring.

“It’s nowhere remotely close to clean,” he tells Steve as he hands the key over. “You know how to get there?”

“I think I know where my finance’s apartment is,” Steve huffs. Well, he has Google on his phone; he’s only been to Bucky’s city apartment a handful of times.

“Please don’t eat the rest of the ice cream. I’ve been dreaming about it all day,” Bucky tells him and then kisses him goodbye.

“I make no promises,” Steve calls as he starts to make his way back to the elevators.

Steve buys a half-gallon of mint chocolate chip and some other groceries that he’s willing to bet Bucky doesn’t have on his way to the apartment. He’s quite loaded down with files and groceries by the time he gets there.

Bucky’s apartment makes their old apartment in DC look like a palace. It’s even more cramped, one room, and in a building that’s kind of sketchy. If he’s being honest, Steve does worry about Bucky being on his own so much in a new city. He bets that Bucky could sleuth out drugs in less than an hour; maybe even less in a building like this.

Bucky meets with his NA sponsor, Sam, once a week, and Sam randomly checks in on him sometimes. In addition, Stark Industries has a pretty strict drug policy, its alcoholic CEO notwithstanding. This chance to do what he’s always wanted, without a boss to curb him in and with Stark money flooding into his department, is worth continued sobriety in Bucky’s mind. Steve knows that he still panics every time they’re given random drug tests, a holdover from the days when he knew he wouldn’t pass them, but every test has been clean so far.

Steve has to have faith in Bucky, and he has to believe that it’s enough to keep him from giving in to the siren call of the drugs stashed rather openly in the city.

He lets himself into Bucky’s apartment, which is just as disastrous as Bucky warned him it would be. Steve doubts that there are any clothes on hangers in the closet, because he’s pretty sure that Bucky’s entire wardrobe is on the floor or draped over furniture.

He changes out of his suit into a pair of Bucky’s sweatpants, which fit him quite snugly, and a t-shirt that he’s almost positive Bucky stole from him. He cleans the studio apartment in its entirety, and then he takes a nap. It’s the most relaxing afternoon he can remember having in recent memory.

Bucky wakes him up at six with a blowjob, and when he’s sucked Steve’s brains out through his cock, Steve manages to roll over limply and crouch on his elbow and knees.

“Fuck me,” he breathes into Bucky’s pillow, inhaling the scent of Bucky’s spicy shampoo and sweat.

“I don’t have any any stuff.”

“Then go get conditioner or something,” Steve wines. He jumps as Bucky’s tongue flicks over his hole.

“You’re completely gone for it,” Bucky says, amazement coloring his tone. “You’d probably let me put it in you with just spit.”

“I would if we were on a dessert island,” Steve shoots back before Bucky gets any ideas, “But there are plenty of slippery things at hand. Go find one.”

“Crisco?” Bucky jokes, but Steve sees that he’s heading for the bathroom instead of the kitchen with some degree of relief. Bucky comes back with the conditioner bottle hanging from his fingertips, and the last of the tension from today rolls off Steve’s shoulders as Bucky slides a goopy finger into him.

“Fuck, I missed this,” Steve breathes. It’s been over a week. Bucky’s finger probes inside him, and a second later, he feels the heat and the trembling that can only mean Bucky’s found his prostate. “I need to clone you and keep a copy in my bed at all times.”

“You’re so stupid when you’re panting for it,” Bucky tells him. Steve can hear the grin in his voice.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around lately,” Bucky tells him a minute later as he’s slipping a second finger into Steve. He’s not smiling this time.

“It’s okay, baby,” Steve tells him. He can’t say he doesn’t mind, because that’s a lie, but it is okay. He’s happy for Bucky, and he knows that he owes Bucky some sacrifices. Bucky’s done it for him innumerable times. ‘You’re it for me, and things won’t always be easy, but they’ll always be worth it.”

“Okay, fuck, I need you on your back. I need to see your face if you’re going to say shit like that to me.” Bucky pulls his fingers out and Steve reluctantly rolls over again. Steve pulls his legs toward his chest and Bucky slips three fingers inside of him, locking his eyes onto Steve’s.

“Still want to marry me, even if I’m a sap?” Steve teases without breaking eye contact.

“I’ve always known you were a sap. I might have,” Bucky tells him as he pulls his fingers out and slicks his cock up with the conditioner, “even encouraged it at times.” He slides into Steve and Steve pulls him down so he can kiss Bucky.

“First one to come makes dinner,” he whispers against his lips. Bucky laughs as he starts to thrust, and Steve can’t remember being angry this afternoon in the middle of this totally perfect moment.

Bucky comes first, and he complains while he throws together a salad and warms up some leftover fried chicken.

“This is not fair. Technically you came first when I blew you.” Steve shrugs innocently and runs his eyes over Bucky’s bare chest.

“Always a sore loser.”

“Sex is not a competition, Steven,” Bucky tries to be stern.

“Then why do I always win?”

“You’ve never lost anything in your life,” Bucky tells him with feigned exasperation. The mood changes in a way only perceptible to people who have learned to read each other after spending most of their adult lives together. Steve can tell they’re both thinking about it.

“That might change soon,” he jokes lamely.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Bucky says staunchly. “Until then, you’ve got my vote and my checkbook.”

“I’m not asking you to bankroll me, Bucky,” Steve says. They’ve danced around this conversation, but apparently they’re having it now, wearing underwear and nothing else, in Bucky’s cramped apartment.

“You’ve never run a campaign without Rogers money before,” Bucky reminds him.

“I have savings from working for the House.”

“And I have an international patent in a multi-million dollar technology industry. I need to invest,” Bucky says as he chops up the chicken and throws it into the salad, “And the first thing I want to invest in is my husband.” He dishes the salad into two bowls, and Steve can see that he looks a little shy. They’re still not used to the ‘husband’ word.

But Bucky keeps going. “Because he’s really the only constant that I believe in.” Steve is floored, and he accepts his salad but doesn’t start eating it yet.

“You know, for someone who calls out my sappy behavior,” Steve tells him a minute later. “You’re basically the king of the saps. I can never match you. I can only aspire.”

“Fuck you; I don’t have emotions,” Bucky tells him with lettuce in his teeth. “This is an ethical decision about government leadership, nothing more.”

Steve takes a bite of his salad and stares at Bucky, still in disbelief that this man is for him.

Steve and Bucky get married on a day in July with over one hundred-degree temperatures. Just walking from the car to the church makes Steve stick to the inside of his suit. He’s glad that he’s not in a full tuxedo, or he’d probably pass out.

They’ve only invited fifty people, and it’s much nicer than the last time when Steve could spot foreign dignitaries and Katie Couric in the pews. Their closest friends and the family they actually like are there to see this, even though quite a few people are furious at having been excluded. Much to Steve’s displeasure, Sarah had made him invite his father, and Joe is sitting in the front row because they’d forgone groomsmen and bridesmaids. Steve’s brothers are serving as their best men.

Bucky’s father is also scowling at the front of the church from a few seats back. He’s a sad, wasted-away man who gives Steve chills when he thinks about the similar path that Bucky could have taken. He’s very recently out of prison for possession and distribution charges, and he’ll probably end up back there before the year is out. Bucky’s embarrassed by his shabby suit and general displeasure, but Steve can’t imagine getting married without trying to include George Barnes.

The only parent who looks happy is Sarah, but she looks effervescently happy enough to make up for it. She pulls Steve aside before he and Bucky walk down the aisle together and hugs him.

“I’m so happy you get to do this,” she tells him tearfully. “Last time, I felt like the worst mother…but I’m so happy for you and Bucky,” she says, using Bucky’s nickname. She pulls a confused Bucky into the embrace with her other hand. “I’m so happy the world…and the time…and that this works out now.” Steve thinks he gets what she’s trying to say.

Their suits complement each other, Bucky in gray, Steve in black, though Bucky has endured plenty of teasing from the best men that he should really be in white, it being his first wedding and all. Steve’s brothers have also taken it upon themselves apparently to learn about gay sex and make plenty of inappropriate jokes about the wedding night.

Steve stands in front of God and witnesses and turns to Clint for the ring. Clint winks as he hands it over, and Steve finally gets to turn to Bucky and slip the ring onto his finger. He relives the memory from years ago of taking the ring from Bucky and feeling his hands shake, and when Bucky’s hands are perfectly steady from a combination of happiness and sobriety, he kisses him before the minister gives the go-ahead.

“Woah there, Steve,” the minister jokes. Their guests laugh, and Steve sheepishly holds his left hand out for his own ring.

Their reception is small enough to hold in the banquet room of their favorite Italian restaurant, and there’s no dance floor, because they gave up on working out who leads and who follows years ago. There’s good food and cake and plenty of alcohol, and everyone appears to be having a good time (apart from Bucky’s dad).

Steve and Bucky weave through their guests, hand-in-hand, and thank everyone for coming. Everyone kisses and congratulates them, and they get roped into talking about politics or Stark Industries at more than one table. Everyone wants to tell Bucky that they always believed in him, which is a lie, but they choose to accept it at face value on a night like tonight.

Steve shakes George Barnes’s hand and gushes about how he’s raised such an amazing son, which is another kind lie, because George isn’t responsible for what makes Bucky…Bucky. That’s all self-made and adversity-forged.

“Never thought he’d end up a homo,” George says, and Steve fights to keep the smile plastered on his face. George beckons Steve closer, and he resists the urge to tell the guy off. “Thank you for taking care of Jimmy,” George whispers in a reedy, smoky voice. Steve is surprised, and his heart warms towards George against his better instincts. “I don’t reckon he’d be no better off than me if you hadn’t been with him.” Steve shakes his hand again, and resolves to do better by the senior Barnes.

“You’re telling me what he said later,” Bucky instructs him quietly as they move on to Steve’s parents.

“Dad, thank you for coming,” Steve says politely as he shakes his own father’s hand. Joe flicks his eyes over Bucky.

“I don’t have a lot to say to you, Steven.”

“I actually have some stuff to say to you, but now isn’t the place. Call me tomorrow?”

“I’m a busy man, son,” Joe says with a sigh.

“I’m pretty sure you’re going to call me tomorrow. Mom,” he says as he moves over to Sarah and Bucky moves to shake Joe’s hand, “Thank you so much for planning this.”

“If I’d let you plan it, we’d be in a Five Guys right now,” she jokes. It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not totally undeserved.

“Bucky and I are going to head out soon, so can you keep the party going?”

“And just exactly why are you leaving your own reception early?” Clint asks while waggling his eyebrows. “I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t wait another few hours.”

“Yeah, married sex isn’t worth leaving a party for,” Don chimes in. Jane glares at him.

“Language, boys,” Sarah chirps.

“Mom, ‘sex’ isn’t a bad word,” Don tries to argue. It’s not going to get him anywhere; Sarah is unchangeable about some things.

“We have an early morning tomorrow. Work stuff.”

“I wish you’d let me plan a honeymoon for you,” Sarah says like they’re purposefully denying her.

“We’ll take one in December,” Steve tells her. “Love you all; thank you for coming.” Sarah insists on kissing Bucky again and whispering in his ear.

“And you’re telling me what my mother said,” Steve comments as they walk to the next table.

“Let me give you the Cliff’s notes; she knows, and she wants me to take care of you.”

“That’s…remarkably similar to what your dad said.”

“Should we be offended that our parents think we can’t look after our own asses?”

“I think that’s the point of being married,” Steve tells him and bumps their hips together. “You have someone else to watch your ass.”

“Oh, I’m watching,” Bucky leers at him as they step up to the next table.

The next morning, Steve and Bucky untangle their bodies and argue over who gets to take the first shower. They end up in the shower together, surprising exactly neither of them, and Steve’s too sore from being thoroughly fucked the night before for a repeat.

“Okay, fine, do me,” Bucky says, leaning against the wall of the shower and pushing his ass toward Steve. Steve thinks about it for a less than a second before grabbing the conditioner.

“No, moron, go get lube.”

“You’ve used this on me before.”

“But we have lube now.”

“I’m not going to get it; you go get it or I’m using this.” Bucky doesn’t move, so Steve starts to open him up with the substance available to him.

They bicker about where to stop for breakfast, and Bucky gets testy when Steve tries to fix his hair in line at Starbucks.

All in all, their marriage is off to a perfect start.

Caffeinated and coiffed, they take their places on the couch in Steve’s office with the dozen reporters who have been invited to this 8 AM press conference. Steve’s staffers hover in the background, most of them unaware what he’s about to announce.

“Thank you for coming today,” Steve tells the group, parroting his line from last night. “I’ll make this quick.”

“Congratulations on your marriage,” a reporter chimes in. Several reporters echo the sentiment and start to ask questions about the wedding, so apparently it’s not going to be as quick as Steve planned.

“Okay, Steve legitimately has something to say that you’re going to fist-fight over who gets to run it first,” Bucky tells the group after several questions about the ceremony and the attendees. The group tenses, eager.

“I’m very grateful for the time I’ve been permitted by my constituents to spend in the House of Representatives,” Steve says as he squeezes Bucky’s knee. “I have tried my best to represent their interests faithfully, and it’s been rewarding to play a role in shaping our nation’s decisions on their behalf. I feel that the time, however, has come for me to serve in a different capacity.”

Steve takes a breath.

“I am announcing my intent to run for Governor of New York against the incumbent Governor this November.”

Pause.

The room explodes.

Bucky shifts next to him.

“How’s my ass?” Steve asks him in an undertone.

“Nowhere I can’t follow it,” Bucky tells him confidently. 


	7. Epilogue

At the age of 55, Steve stands in the center of a crowded hotel ballroom and watches the polling results trickle in on the televisions mounted to the walls. They’re tuned to every major news network, and the results are far from conclusive.

Steve’s palms are sweaty, and in memory of his father, he doesn’t wipe them on his pants.

“Obviously New York goes to Governor Rogers, but Pennsylvania is too close to call…” a female voice floats at him from the TV to which he’s closest.

This is too stressful. He turns and looks for Bucky in the crowd.

“Ian, where’s dad?” he asks his son as he walks up to the young man surrounded by a swarm of female campaigners. Though not a Rogers by blood, Ian looks every inch the dynasty child in his tailored suit, blue tie, and flag pin. He has no interest in politics, however, and Steve is more than fine with that.

He’s already told Steve that he’s moving into the White House after he finishes college and freeloading like a normal kid.

“He’s on the phone with Uncle Tony. I think a jet exploded or something.” Even though Bucky had split ways with the private sector and gone back to school for his PhD in Robotics several years ago, Stark is convinced that Bucky can always come up with creative solutions to his tech problems. In exchange, Stark has to extend an internship to at least one of Bucky’s grad students at the State University of New York Institute of Technology each semester.

Steve leaves the ballroom after two laps and finds Bucky in the coat closet.

“Stark, I have to go. Steve’s here. Yeah, this is kind of a big night for us,” Bucky says sarcastically into the phone when he sees Steve. “Yeah. No. I’m telling you, it’s the fuel lines. Okay. Okay, I’m hanging up now.” He ends the call and turns sheepishly toward Steve.

“Sorry. I’m supposed to be watching your ass, and that clown won’t stop calling.” Steve shrugs and joins him in the coat closet.

“It’s fine. I’ll hide out here with you. It’s like a pressure cooker in there.”

“That’s going to raise some eyebrows if they call it for you and bring the cameras in here.” Steve sits down on the floor next to the wall Bucky is leaning on.

“If they call it for me. Maria Hill is taking a lot of the map.” Bucky joins him on the floor with a grunt.

Steve sits quietly for a moment and soaks in his presence, alone for the first time in ages in the circus that is a presidential campaign, and then he rests his head on Bucky’s shoulder.

“I’m anxious. I just want to know, either way, and then deal with it.”

“You know you’re going to win, Steve.”

“That kind of cockiness isn’t helpful now, Buck.”

“You know how I know?” Steve turns to Bucky and gives him a look like he really can’t handle any more comparison of his merits to Hill’s.

“Because I’m named after James Buchanan, who was the first gay president. Probably.” Steve laughs, the tension dissipating for a moment. “So it makes sense that I have to end up married to a gay president.”

Steve lifts his prematurely grey head, in comparison to Bucky’s hair which is barely shot through with silver, and thinks that Bucky is the only reason he’s gotten where he is. With anyone else, with Sharon or another woman or even another man, he thinks he’d have tapped out long ago.

Bucky rejuvenates him and keeps him motivated, even through all the naysayers and the close calls with Bucky’s addiction and the shitty experiences that politics has thrown at him. Because he has Bucky with him, he can make his peace with them and turn them into stepping stones.

“Seriously, though, do you know what you’re going to do if you win? Or if you don’t win?”

“I’ll decide when it happens,” Steve says, already much calmer.

“You’re going to be emotionally compromised either way; you sure you’ll be okay to make that decision?”

“I will if you’re there,” Steve tells him. He laughs at himself for the sappiness of what he’s about to say. “You’re all the decisions I make.” Bucky looks at him with eyes that haven’t dulled with age, and they lean toward each other.

“Okay, gross,” Ian says from the doorway. “People are freaking out because they can’t find either of you. And there’s a joke to be made here about the two of you hiding in a closet.” Steve rolls his eyes and heaves himself to his feet, pulling Bucky up after him.

“They think it’s going to be called soon,” Ian says much more seriously as they follow him back to the ballroom. Steve reaches out and laces his fingers with Bucky’s. They reach the room’s threshold and see that all of the televisions have been turned to CNN.

“I think we can definitively say who the next American president is,” the anchor announces authoritatively.

Bucky kisses him when they hear the name.

     

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed. This started as a one-shot, and then I was asked to expand it, suggestions were made, and it turned into this. For those of you who gave me ideas, I hope it's everything you wanted.


End file.
